The police and para-military forces that are engaged in the anti-insurgency operation in Porahat division, a Naxal hotbed after Saranda on Sunday intensified the drive. The area has been sealed and a combing operation has been launched to flush out the Maoist guerrillas from the area.
Meanwhile, the police carried bodies of six villagers from a mountain top at Kudabera jungle, where they had been buried after they were killed in retaliation of the murder of two villagers at the Manmaru village in adjoining Tebo police station area of West Singhbhum district on March 3.
The police took these bodies for post-mortem at Chaibasa, the headquarters of West Singhbhum on Sunday.
Revealing about the murders that took place in two phases, SP West Singhbhum Pankaj Kamboj said that a group of six villagers had on March 3 afternoon killed two villagers of Kudabera following a dispute in a gambling over cockfight at Manmaru village.
One of the two victims was a Maoist. After the news of the Maoist’s murder at the hand of the people of Manmaru villagers, a rebel leader had swooped over the Manmaru village on March 12 and killed all the six villagers who were involved in the murder. later, he had forced the people of Manmaru village to carry the bodies to a Mountain, about 25 kilometres away in Kudabera, where the bodies were buried.
Kamboj said as the police were not informed about the murders took place between March 3 and March 12, they would register separate cases against those involved in these murders.
The fact came to fore after a strong contingent of police and para-military forces, CRPF carried out a combing operation at the dense Kudabera jungle in Sonua of West Singhbhum district after a two-hour long encounter with the naxals on Friday.
The rebels had killed six villagers-- Dange Purti, Hindoo Odiya, litha Odiya, Mangu Odiya, Bandiya Odiya and Selaya Odiya after pronouncing death for them in a self styled ‘people’s court’ in Manmaru village situated in the dense Porahat-Saranda forest region.