Bodies of all the six Maoists including three women cadres, slain in the encounter, were on Thursday identified.
Raipur: In a major blow to Maoists, two dreaded Maoists of Bastar were killed in Tuesday’s encounter with security forces in the Indravati National Park in Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh, making two powerful area committees of the ultras, leaderless.
Bodies of all the six Maoists including three women cadres, slain in the encounter, were on Thursday identified.
Two of them were considered terror faces of the outlawed CPI (Maoist) in Bastar, a senior police officer said.
The two slain Maoists are Madded Area Committee in-charge Buchhanna and Pamed Area Committee secretary Urmila.
The female Maoist is the wife of Papa Rao, member of the powerful Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC) of Maoists.
The neutralization of Buchhanna and Urmila have made the two powerful area committees functioning in west Bastar and south Bastar leaderless, police said.
Both were in the rank of divisional committee members and carried a bounty of Rs eight lakh each.
“Buchhanna and Urmila were terror faces of the banned CPI (Maoists) in Bastar”, Bastar range inspector general of police P Sunderraj told this newspaper.
According to him, the outcome of the November 11 encounter in the Indravati National Park area has dealt a major blow to the military, political, urban, and supply networks of the West and South Bastar Divisions of Maoists.
“This was a very significant and decisive counterinsurgency operation”, he added.
Significantly, the CRPF is planning to establish counterinsurgency and jungle warfare college in Pamed area.
Acting on specific intelligence inputs on the presence of two top Maoists along with 50-60 Naxals of the West and South Bastar Divisions in the forested area of the National Park region of Bijapur district in south Bastar, a search operation was launched by security forces on November 11.
Six hardcore ultras were gunned down in the anti-Naxal operation that lasted nearly 12 hours.
The six slain Naxals combinedly carried a bounty of Rs 27 lakh.
The weapons recovered at the encounter site included two INSAS rifles, one nine mm carbine, one .303 rifle, one single shot rifle, one 12 bore rifle.
Other slain Maoists in the encounter have been identified as Jagat, an area committee member carrying a bounty of Rs five lakh, and three party members, Deve, Bhagat and Mangli.
The party members carried a bounty of Rs two lakh each.
