Five more Maoists killed in op in which top guns Sudhakar & Bhaskar were eliminated
Sudhakar, the ideological chief of Maoists, was gunned down on Thursday and Bhaskar, a Telangana State Committee Member, on Friday. Skirmishes continued all night and on Saturday, the bodies of five more cadres were found. Two of them are women. Police are trying to identify them.
Other high-level Maoist operatives, including Telangana State Committee's press in-charge Bandi Prakash, have been spotted in the encounter zone.
With this operation, sources say, security forces have foiled a crucial Maoist attempt to coordinate their activities in the region following the encounter killing of CPI(Maoist) general secretary Basavaraju.
Security forces have been battling not only insurgents' bullets and treacherous hilly terrain, but also snakes and other threats in the wild as the operation continues deep inside the jungles. Bastar range IG P Sundarraj announced the elimination of 7 Maoists and said that a large cache of arms and ammunition, including two AK-47 rifles, has been seized from the encounter zones.
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"Search operations and area domination exercises continue in the dense forest terrain to flush out any remaining insurgents and ensure complete control of the region," Sundarraj said.
"A few personnel sustained snake bites and bee stings and suffered severe dehydration but the forces kept up the momentum. All injured personnel are currently in stable condition and receiving medical care," Sundarraj said.
High-intensity encounters were spread across three consecutive days — June 5-7.
The encounter in which Bashar was killed was the most fierce, said police sources. On Thursday, Sundarraj had said that the operation was launched after precise inputs on the location of some top Maoist commanders. District Reserve Guards, Special Task Force and CRPF's CoBRA commandos moved out to intercept the group on Wednesday night.
They went on foot to maintain stealth and took the Maoists completely by surprise the next morning.
As the insurgents scattered, the forces also spread out and running gunbattles broke out across a large swathe of the jungle.
The operation, still underway, is one of the most significant missions in the red corridor in recent years, said an officer, adding that they are hopeful of more success.
Sudhakar, a native of Andhra Pradesh, was in charge of the Maoists' Revolutionary Political School and was in the insurgent outfit for nearly four decades. He was the third central committee member to be killed in Bastar this year after Jai Ram alias Chalpathy on Jan 21 and Basavaraju on May 21.
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