Sixteen Naxals, five of them suspected to be involved in a deadly attack on a CRPF team last year, were arrested from Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, police said on Monday.
There were two women among the arrested ultras, they added.
The arrests were made Sunday from a hill near Minpa village under the Chintagufa police station limits by a joint team of the Special Task Force (STF), the District Reserve Guard (DRG) and the district police, a senior police official told PTI. In view of next month's Assembly polls, the security forces have intensified the patrolling in the interior forests of the Naxal-hit districts to apprehend the lower-rung cadres, who are instrumental in planting explosives to target the police personnel and putting up Maoist posters and banners, he said.
Acting on an information about the presence of Naxals, the joint team launched an operation from the Burkapal camp towards Minpa and Tadmetla, located around 500 km from state capital Raipur, and apprehended the ultras, the police official added.
