At least 26 Maoists were killed in an encounter with security forces in the dense forests of Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, officials saidy evening, in one of the deadliest counter-insurgency operations in the region since 2018 when 42 Maoists were killed in two encounters.
People aware of the developments said that four police officials were seriously injured in the gunbattle that lasted for about 10 hours, and were airlifted to Orange City Hospital in Nagpur for treatment. The major offensive came after specific intelligence about the movement of the Maoists from Chhattisgarh to the forests of Mardintola and Kotgul, under the Gyarapatti police station, for a meeting, the officials said.
The site of the encounter is over 900 km away from Mumbai and borders Chhattisgarh. A special police party with jawans of the C-60 force, an elite anti-Maoist squad of the district police, led by additional superintendent of police Soumya Munde, raided the Maoist hideouts at around 6am, the officials said.
“Police had received secret information that there was a camp of Naxalites in the Gyarapatti-Kodagul forest of Korchi, on the basis of this, the C-60 unit of Gadchiroli Police started the search operation in Gyarapatti-Kodagul forest area,” Gadchiroli superintendent of police Ankit Goyal said.
During the raids, the left-wing extremists started firing at the security forces that retaliated the gun fire, the official said. A special combat force of the district police was sent to the forest to aid the security efforts, Goyal said. “We have recovered the bodies of 26 Naxals so far from the forest,” Goyal said, adding that toll may increase as a search operation in the area is still going on, amid sporadic gunfire. The slain Maoists include women commanders, the official said. The bodies of the slain Maoists will be brought to Gadchiroli for post-mortem examination, Goyal said.
Officials believe that the heavy casualties suffered in the encounter will have disastrous impacts on the Maoist movement. Gadchiroli is one of the dozens of Maoist hotbeds dotting central and eastern India.
“Gadhchiroli, after being developed into a strong zone, became the pivotal point in the Maoist dominated areas particularly in Bastar, enabling supply of logistics, medicines and medical treatment to the cadres, “ a senior Chhattisgarh Police official said. Over the past few years, the extremists have attempted an expansion into the MMC zone (Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh confluence) - a new area adjoining the Kanha reserve that they are seeking to enter.
Gadhchiroli also offered a safe passage for cadres and senior leaders of the outfit’s central committee to travel to MMC zone. “The gradual decimation of Maoists in Gadchiroli will have disastrous impact on growth of Maoists in MMC region. Maoists in Bastar will be isolated with pressure across Gadchiroli, Telangana, AP and Odisha,” another official in Chhattisgarh said. While the identities of the Maoists are yet to be ascertained, people familiar with the matter said that many senior members of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) were killed in the operation.
Milind Teltumbde, a central committee member, who was once the secretary of the Maharashtra unit of the CPI (Maoist), is suspected to have been one of the targets in the encounter, the people cited above said.
