The Gadchiroli police on Saturday gunned down 26 Maoists in the forests of Gyarapatti in Korchi taluka of eastern Maharashtra, while four jawans were injured in the same ten-hour-long fierce encounter.
This was the second-biggest success for the commandos of the Anti Naxal Squad (ANS) of the Gadchiroli police after they eliminated as many as 40 Naxalites in two separate operations in April 2018.
The four injured policemen — identified as Maharu Kudmethe (35), Tikaram Katange (41), Ravindra Naitam (42) and Sarveshwar Atram (34) — were airlifted to Nagpur where they were admitted to the Critical Care Complex of Orange City Hospital and Research Institute.
“We have so far recovered 26 bodies of the Maoists killed in the encounter.
The injured policemen are undergoing treatment at a hospital in Nagpur,” Gadchiroli’s Superintendent of Police Ankit Goyal said.
Described as the longest-ever gun battle witnessed in the Naxalite-infested Gadchiroli district of eastern Maharashtra, the encounter began at 6 am in the forests and continued till 4 pm.
Acting on a tip-off that the Korchi Dalam members of the Maoists were camping at the Gyarapatti forests, a strong contingent of the elite C-60 commandos of the ANS of the Gadchiroli police carried out the operation. Unconfirmed reports said that a top commander of the Korchi Dalam was killed in the encounter.
The police have reason to believe that two Naxal leaders, including a member of the Gadchiroli divisional committee of the CPI(Maoist), who was the head of the Korchi Dalam, might have been killed in the prolonged gun battle between the ANS commandos and the Maoists.
Following the encounter, the ANS commandos are carrying out a combing operation in the Gyarapatti forests to ascertain if more Maoists had been killed in the encounter.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil has congratulated the Gadchiroli police for their daring anti-Naxal operation in which as many as 26 Maoists have been killed. “We have been given to understand that two local central committee leaders of CPI (Maoist) have been killed in the encounter. If it is true that their two leaders have indeed been killed, then it is a major success for Maharashtra Police. Let’s wait for the names of the Maoists killed in the encounter till tomorrow morning,” Walse-Patil said.
Saturday’s is the second biggest-ever encounter in terms of Naxal casualties, since the twin anti-Naxal operations that took place on April 22-23, 2018 in which 40 Maoists, including 20 women were killed.
While 33 Maoists were killed in the first encounter undertaken jointly by the C-60 commandos of the Gadchiroli police and personnel from battalion 9 of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Boria-Tadgaon jungle of Bramhagad tehsil on the morning of April 22, as many as six Left Wing Extremists were gunned down in the second operation carried out by the C-60 commandos in Ninar jungle of Jamalghatta sub-division in Gadchiroli district on the following evening.
Later on April 28, 2021, one highly decomposed body of a Maoist from the Indravati river bed was found, taking the toll in the much-discussed twin Naxal encounters to 40.
The significance of that twin encounter was that four of the five Maoist Divisional Committee (DVC) members of south Gadchiroli unit were eliminated.
Saturday’s encounter comes on the heels of fierce gun battle in the deep forests of Kotmi in Etapalli taluka of Gadchiroli district on May 21, 2021, in which 13 Maoists, including seven women, were killed. After that gun battle that lasted for more than 90 minutes, the elite C-60 commandos of the ANS of the Gadchiroli police had recovered a huge cache of arms, ammunition and explosives, including one AK-47 rifle, SLR, Carbine, 303 and 12 bore rifles and an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) from the spot.
Among those killed in that encounter was a Naxal operative identified as one Satish, a member of the north Gadchiroli divisional committee of CPI (Maoist).