Telangana: Six Maoists Killed in Fierce Encounter with Security Forces in Telangana

TELANGANA: In an encounter on Thursday, six members of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) were gunned down by security forces in the dense Neeladrigutta forest area of Telangana's Bhadradri Kothagudem district bordering Chhattisgarh. The gun battle also left two elite Greyhounds policemen injured.

The Maoists and police had an exchange of fire when the Greyhounds, the elite anti-Maoist squad, undertook a combing operation near the village of Raghunadhapalem in Karakagudem block, bordering the Mulugu district. The combing operation was confirmed by Bhadradri Kothagudem Superintendent of Police B Rohit Raju and he said, "Six Maoists were killed and a huge cache of arms and ammunition was recovered from the site. Unfortunately, two of our personnel were injured in the exchange of fire."

While the identity of the slain Maoists is being verified, their bodies have been shifted to a local government hospital for post-mortem. The police sources, however, said that the dead included Lachanna, a divisional committee member and notorious commander of the Maoist squad. Lachanna, a native of Rayapadu in Chhattisgarh, was one of the most-wanted leaders of CPI (Maoist) with a reward of ₹10 lakh put on his head, apart from 50 cases in various police stations. The identity of the other slain Maoists is suspected to be Tulasi, Sukhram, Ramu, Durgesh and Kosi-all of them belonging to the same squad.

The incident is the first major Maoist encounter in Telangana after 2018 when 10 Maoists were killed in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district. The area had otherwise been peaceful with sporadic violence confined to border areas.

The face-off is close on the heels of a raging gunbattle in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh, where nine Maoists were killed along with top CPI-Maoist leader Macherla Esobu, alias Jagan, Dada Randev and Randhir, who carried a ₹25-lakh reward on his head.

According to a senior police officer, the intensified operations under 'Operation Kagar' in Chhattisgarh might force some Maoist groups into the border forests of Telangana, which possibly led to the deadly encounter on Thursday. The exchange of fire essentially marks one aspect of the continuing struggle to put the screws on Left-wing extremism in the region, with the Telangana security forces maintaining an alert in the forested borders.

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