Raipur, April 11: Even five days after the massacre of 76 security personnel in south Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, the police and paramilitary forces on Sunday continued to draw a blank, appearing far from any position of advantage vis-à-vis their ongoing inter-state joint operation to track down the Naxalites involved in the ambush.

A senior Chhattisgarh police officer engaged in this intense operation told this correspondent on Sunday that after their primary lead that the Naxalites had divided themselves into three groups and were heading in three directions, it had been gathered through their network of informers in the villages that the Naxalites had split into even smaller groups. When asked about their weapons and ammunition, the officer said that the Naxals usually hide them at the houses of their trained cadres in the villages and that it is very difficult to detect them. Once the Naxalites leave their formations, they pass off as any villager by the roadside or in a busy village “haat (community market)”.
Chhattisgarh additional director-general of police (anti-Naxalite operations) Ramniwas reiterated on Sunday evening that they had information that two “companies” of Naxalites (about 200 trained men) had crossed over to Malkangiri in Orissa, but so far the search operation in that territory has drawn a blank.
While the joint operation against the Naxalites continues in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh and the adjoining states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, and in the midst of the charge that the CRPF men had not been given jungle warfare training before being posted in the Naxalite-affected area, a committed body of men — 750 of them — are undergoing gruelling jungle warfare training to combat Naxals at the Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College (CJWC) near Kanker, on the Raipur-Jagdalpur highway. The jawans being trained here are undeterred by the massacre of the 76 CRPF men. When this correspondent talked to these men, one of them said: “We are here on a mission and shall not deviate from our goal.”
State police spokesman R.K. Vij said that besides those being inducted into anti-Naxal operations from the Chhattisgarh armed police and paramilitary forces, policemen from Jharkhand and Maharashtra have also been trained at the CJWC.

Lalit Shastri