A day after Thursday’s fierce gunbattle, which lasted for more than four hours and left at least 10 Maoists dead, police have unravelled the tale behind it, even as the bodies were handed over to the families. Police also recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunitions from the site, including an AK-47.
According to the police, ‘Chhote Sarkar’ was killed to save ‘Bade Sarkar’ in the Maoist-TPC war for supremacy in the region. The Maoists and Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC) rebels had clashed near lakarbandha village in Chatra district of Jharkhand on Thursday.
lavlesh Singh, known as Chhote Sarkar, was going to receive Sandeepji, who is popular called Bade Sarkar. Sandeepji was coming to the area hold a meeting of top Maoist leaders on Wednesday night. They were to discuss decreasing influence of Naxals in the area as well as increasing police action against them.
Sandeep is mastermind of the latehar incident, which led to killing of 13 people, including three civilians.
“While Chhote Sarkar and his team were going to receive Bade Sarkar from the nearby jungles, he was cornered and killed by TPC,” said IG (Hazaribagh) Ml Meena.
Sources claim that about 40 Maoists had taken shelter in houses and fields of Khusiyala village on Wednesday. TPC rebels got information on their whereabouts and some 150 of them first cornered the Maoists and then attacked them from all sides. The Naxals retaliated, but could not withstand the superior firepower for long. They surrendered before the TPC rebels around 2 am after a fierce gunbattle lasting around four hours.
“Ammunition of the Maoists was exhausted soon as they were not prepared for the ambush. They had no choice but to surrender before TPC rebels. The TPC killed 10 senior-most members of the Maoists, who were leading the team, and took the remaining 25-30 with them,” said a source.
People of Khusiyala village are terrorised after the clash even as police on Friday handed over the bodies of the slain Maoists to their family members. Bullet marks on the village mud houses and on the Khusiyala school building demonstrate the intensity of the gunbattle. According to senior police officials, the clash began in lakrabandha forest, some 20 km from Kunda Police Station in Chatra on Wednesday evening and went on till 4 am on Thursday. Both Maoist and TPC rebels fled from the site as darkness receded.
TPC, a splinter group of the CPI(Maoists), was founded by Brajesh Ganjhu, alias Sardarji, a former member of CPI(Maoists) in lawalong area of Chatra way back in 2001. It had formally declared that the police machinery was not its main enemy but the Maoists.