Congratulating its cadres for killing ten commandos of CRPF, the CPI(Maoist) has admitted it lost three of its comrades in the fierce gun battle that ensued on Monday in the hilly and forest regions on Gaya-Aurangabad borders. Claiming to be spokesman of CPI(Ml)‘s central zonal committee Paramjit said the Maoists’ action was in retaliation of the CRPF’s Operation Greenhunt. “Our resistance will continue,” he told some Gaya-based newsmen over phone on Tuesday evening.
He also identified the three dead Maoists as Bipin Kisan of lohardagga in Jharkhand, Haridwar alias Suday of Barachatti in Gaya and Jeetendra alias Boss of Amas in Gaya. This is the first time the banned outfit has identified its killed cadres. As per the tradition, the Maoists carried away their dead comrades in bid to keep their identity secret. However, the Aurangabad Police suspected that one of the dead Maoists was its commander and top leader Azad. But there was no official confirmation about it. Police also claimed that four Naxals had been killed in the encounter but Paramjit said, “The police might have killed some villager and branding him as Maoist.”
The police claimed that during the rescue operation after the encounter they found big blood spots which indicated that Maoists suffered heavy casualty and they might have taken away some dead bodies.
Denying any lack of coordination between the security forces and Bihar police, Bihar Director General of Police PK Thakur said it was a big operation but the forces would take a lesson from the loopholes that caused heavy loss to the CRPF. “In future we have to strongly coordinate to avoid such huge casualties. We have to make our planning more carefully and the anti-Naxal operation will continue,” said Thakur. He said the kind of arms seized from the spot indicated that top leaders of the outlawed outfit were present there as generally such sophisticated arms are in possession of the leaders. The recovered arms included one AK-47, looted from Jharkhand Police, an under barrel grenade launcher, two Insas rifles and one SlR.
The Bihar Police has decided to institute an internal inquiry into the circumstances leading to the killing of ten CoBRA jawans of the CRPF, said ADG headquarters Sunil Kumar. He said any shortcoming on the part of the police and lack or coordination would be probed thoroughly.
DGP Thakur said the security forces had specific information about a big congregation of Maoist commanders but the CRPF jawans were caught in the landmines while negotiating a narrow path on foot. But there is also a suspicion that the Maoists succeeded in conveying wrong information to the police through their informers. The authenticity of the information Aurangabad SP Baburam received and on which he acted had not been duly verified which proved disastrous. It appeared that ultras conveyed wrong information in bid to trap the security forces during monsoon when the jungle regions become inaccessible.