The outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) on Thursday vowed to keep targeting security forces to avenge what it said were atrocities on locals.
“We will continue to hit hard security personnel because their atrocities on local innocent people are continuing,” Gudsa Usendi, spokesperson of the Maoists' frontal unit, DK Special Zonal Committee, told a news channel in Chhattisgarh from an undisclosed location.
The spokesperson refused to give details of the June 29 attack that left 27 security personnel dead in Narayanpur district, part of the 40,000-sq.km. restive Bastar region.
He parried questions how many Maoists were killed, how many rebels took part in the ambush, who led the attack, and how many and what kind of weapons the Maoists looted from the slain CRPF men.
“The June 29 attack was part of the Maoists' continuous retaliation against police atrocities on locals.”
Usendi opposed the Chhattisgarh government's policy of granting mining rights to companies as “outsiders deprive the local people of their rights.”
Bombs hurled at school
PTI reports from Ranchi:
Naxalites on Thursday damaged a school building in a Jharkhand village, while four of their cadres were arrested on the second day of the 48-hour shutdown, called in five Naxal-affected States by the CPI (Maoist). The Maoists hurled two bombs at a middle school at Charai village in the early hours, Palamau Superintendent of Police Anup T Mathew said in Medininagar. While one bomb flattened a room, the other did not explode.
Security forces arrested Maoist ‘Area Commander' Mithilesh Mandal, and two associates in Giridih, said A. V. Homker, SP.
Mandal was allegedly involved in the killing of a special police officer last month and in several robberies. Two rifles and 193 bullets were recovered from him.
Brajesh Yadav, who was a member of the Maoist firing squad, was arrested from Gumla, the police said.
The arrests came during intensive combing operations against the Maoists, who called the bandh in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Bihar against price rise and the Centre's “anti-people” policies.
The shutdown evoked mixed response in naxal-pockets, according to reports.
