For every move the Maoists are making to regain their foothold in Telangana -once their bastion in the country- law enforcing agencies have a strategy.
Police are on a strong wicket with the experience of having ‘successfully tackled’ the Left Wing Extremism in the united Andhra Pradesh. Their multi-pronged strategy of forming specific intelligence wing to keep surveillance on Left wing extremists and simultaneously developing commando teams for combing and other operations had paid results.
From having scores of squads in Telangana earlier, the strength of Maoists had dwindled to just a couple of hundreds now. “Of the 90 odd active Maoists working in Telangana, only 30 are from the area. The remaining are from neighbouring Chhattisgarh State,” says a top police officer, unwilling to be identified.
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Even these Maoists are not continuously moving in Telangana. “They enter the districts of Khammam, Warangal, Adilabad and Karimnagar trying to reinvigorate the movement and beat the retreat as local police and commando teams start searches,” he claims.
In the past three years, more or less that was the pattern of the Maoist movement. Keeping eyes and ears open with a strong network of informants in nook and corner of the State and not ignoring even an iota of information on movements of Maoists is the strength of the police.
While the local police are continuously keeping a close watch on all the vulnerable areas especially the forest zones of the districts bordering Chhasttisgarh, special intelligence and commando wings are supplementing efforts of the former.
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The Maoist movement was earlier stronger to control because of people’s participation but now it is reduced to militant-centric, say the police. They point out to recent busting of squad of Maoists in Karimnagar district along with seizure of cash and ammunition, exuding confidence that they would not leave any scope for Maoists or any other LWE group to rise again