Late on Friday night, the cadres of Mahupadar Area Committee of the banned CPI (Maoist) blasted a panchayat office building at Timurpalli of Mathili block in Malkangiri district of Odisha.
Though there were no casualties as none was present in the building at that time, the building was extensively damaged.
In TCOC mode
This is the second such incident in the last one month, and the Maoists seem to be on the offensive as they are in the Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign (TCOC) mode. This apart, there have been at least two major encounters in the last three months in Odisha, including the one on March 8 in which five Maoists were killed. Rinki, who is one of the main accused in TDP Araku MLA Kidari Sarveswara Rao’s killing, was among the dead.
“The Maoists have been in the counter-offensive mode ever since Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraj took over from Muppala Lakshman Rao alias Ganapathi as general secretary of the party,” a senior police officer in the State Intelligence wing (Extremism) has observed.
‘Military strategist’
“Basavaraj is a military strategist. He was heading the Central Military Commission (CMC), the main military wing of the Maoists. Unlike Ganapathi, he believes in unleashing violence rather than building the party politically or ideologically,” said SP (Visakhapatnam) Attada Babujee.
Basavaraj’s reign started with the killing of Sarveswara Rao and former MLA Siveri Soma in September 2018 near Livitput village of Dumbriguda mandal in Visakhapatnam district.
The Maoists have committed 40 offences since then, which includes the killing of another MLA Bheema Mandavi at Dantewada in Chhattisgarh on April 9, according to a senior officer in the Central Intelligence (Extremist Wing). Another major strike by the Maoists was the killing of 15 C-60 commandos, the crack anti-Naxal unit of Maharashtra, on May 2 at Gadchiroli in Maharashtra.
According to the Intelligence officer, 19 civilians, 22 security forces and 46 Maoists have been killed in the last one year across the Maoist-affected States such as Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh.
‘IED expert’
Basavaraj, who is said to be an expert in the use of improvised explosive device (IED), has made it the mainstay for the attacks.
As per the literature seized by the security forces from various exchange of fire sites, there is a clear emphasis on the use of IEDs and in training the cadres in making and operating them.
IEDs had been planted on the routes taken by both Bheema Mandavi and the commandos.
