After stopping the Naxal cadres to move freely even in some of the remotest jungles in the State, security forces now are stressing on domination of such areas through long Range Patrolling (lRPs), which was earlier considered to be a liberated zone by the (CPI) Maoists. According to CRPF officials, the security forces are moving in the dense forests to reach out to the remote villages so that a rapport gets developed with the villagers, leading to the building a sense of confidence between the two.
“We have made it a point to move deep into the jungles on lRPs so that the villagers living in the remote villages of the Naxal infested areas gets a feeling that the Government agencies are also capable of reaching out to them,” said CRPF IG RK Mishra.
According to the IG, security forces are now moving forward with a three-pronged strategy, which will continue as a relay race dominating one or the other region said to be dominated by the CPI (Maoists) from time to time. “In the first stage, each of the Naxal infested areas has been cleared through intense anti-Naxal operations. In the second stage, efforts are on to create a sense of fear psychosis among the Maoists deterring them on their free movements in such areas, which were earlier claimed to be dominated by them,” said Mishra.
“We are in the second stage right now, doing intensive lRP moving freely into the jungles getting all the vital information regarding the terrains, interacting with the villagers quite frequently,” he added.
The last stage will be identifying and chasing the Maoists till they are finished from the region, for which higher degree of policing will be required while carrying out the operations, said Mishra. Another high ranking official in the State police also asserted that area domination drives has three advantages.
“First, the security forces get acquainted with the difficult terrains, jungles, rivers as well as topography of the region. Secondly, through regular visits of security forces along the jungles, local villagers get a feeling that the economic and social welfare activities in their area will also get a boost with the movement of the Government agencies with the construction of roads and schools. lastly, such movements will automatically put a curb on the local support, they are enjoying in such areas,” said the official.
He said that the operation still continues in the Adhe and Korgi regions of Netarhaat, where the joint team consisting of jawans of CRPF, SRB and Jharkhand Jaguar on Thursday, was intercepted by a platoon of the CPI (Maoists) on Thursday, while they were out on area domination drive.
“It is an ongoing process, which is being continued in almost all the Naxal infested areas of the State,” added SP in the Jharkhand Jaguar Saket Kumar Singh. The rebels however, had to back-off and vanish deep into the jungles in South and South-West direction after they failed to sustain intense firing from the side of security forces.
“Motorcycles, mobile phones, SIM cards, utensils along with some explosives have also been recovered from the spot which suggests that a platoon of Maoists was hiding there,” he said. Police sources, however, suspected that the platoon was being headed by some hard core bigwigs of CPI (Maoist) Anal Da or Maharaja Pramanik, who are said to have been spotted in the area recently.