A gun-battle took place between the police and banned Naxal outfit, Maoists of India in Gomia block of Bokaro district, police said on Tuesday. No injuries were reported in the gunfight that happened near Dhamdhrawa and Kumba tungari forest area in Gomia police station area on Monday night at about 7pm to 9pm, a senior officer said. Acting on a tip-off about the movement of self-styled 'area commander' Mithlesh Mahto and his squad, a team of district armed police, Jharkhand district police and a team of CRPF launched a search operation, senior police officials said.
The red rebels opened fire on the police team upon spotting them, and the law enforcers retaliated, leading to a gunfight between them, he said.
However, the Naxals made a hasty retreat from the spot, leaving behind some daily-use items, the officer said.
According to the senior police official the police had received intelligence inputs two days back about the presence of a Naxal camp in the forest in the Dhamdhrawa forest in the Jhumra area of the Gomia block.
"A team of 100 police personnel, along with CRPF launched the anti-Naxal operation. They started conducting a search operation on Monday night in the forest.More than five hundred rounds of bullets were exchanged in the encounter between cops and rebels.”
Sources said that the Bokaro district police had an encounter with the squad of Mithilesh, the zonal commander of the CPI-Maoist, a banned Naxalite organization. Information is being received about the encounter between police and Naxalites in Dhamdharwa of Gomia police station area. More than 1000 rounds of bullets have been fired from both the sides. Some Naxalites are also getting information about bullets. Here the police is running a search operation in search of Naxalites.
Around 7 pm on Monday, over 25 to 30 ultras opened a heavy firing with their sophisticated weapons and ammunition on local district police and CRPF personnel,"police sources said.