Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala will hold a meeting of senior police officers in north Kerala here on Friday, against the backdrop of reported infiltration by the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) in the tri-junction of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.
The meeting, to be held at the PWD Rest House at West Hill at 11 a.m., will see Additional Chief Secretary (Home and Vigilance) Nalini Netto, State Police Chief K.S. Balasubramanian, Additional Director General of Police (ADGP-North Zone) N. Shankar Reddy, ADGP (Intelligence) A. Hemachandran, Inspector General of Police (Thissur Range) Suresh Raj Purohit, and Deputy Inspector General of Police (Kannur Range) Dinendra Kashyap take part.
Superintendents of Police from the districts of Kasaragod, Kannur, Wayanad, Palakkad, Kozhikode Rural, Malappuram and Thrissur Rural; Commissioners of Kozhikode and Thrissur cities; and Deputy Superintendents of Police in north Kerala will also attend.
The agenda of the meeting will be chiefly the anti-Maoist operation in north Kerala, especially after a recent attack on a stone quarrying unit near a tribal settlement close to forests in Kannur, police sources told The Hindu here on Thursday. A major concern is the suspected Maoist infiltration in many tribal hamlets even though Thunderbolt commandos are camping in the forests. The meeting will discuss the need to rope in the Central Reserve Police Force for combined search operations.
The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has already suggested that the State set up an anti-Naxal unit in the wake of a number of such incidents. It has been giving timely intelligence inputs about the heightened Maoist activity in the Kerala forests and has issued fresh warnings of a possible direct assault on government institutions. The meeting would review the progress of Operation Kubera launched in the State to tackle illegal moneylenders.
