At least nine Maoists, including four women, were on Sunday gunned down in an encounter with the Orissa police in a hilly, forested area near Kashipur in Rayagada district, nearly 500 km from here.
According to the Rayagada superintendent of police, two of the slain militants were local area commanders.
Acting on a tip-off, a team of armed police led by the deputy superintendent of police raided on Saturday a Maoist camp in the dense forest at Bhamramali, near Huma Jharan near Kashipur. The rebels, who were holding a meeting reportedly under the leadership of Naxalite leader Azad, immediately retaliated by opening fire on the security personnel. This resulted in a fierce exchange of fire that continued till Sunday morning.
“After we got concrete intelligence reports about the meeting of the Maoists in the forests near Kashipur, we asked the security personnel to conduct the raid operation. The bodies of nine rebels killed in the encounter have been recovered. A few more rebels are suspected to have been injured in the encounter,” deputy inspector-general of police (south-western) Soumendra Priyadarshi said.
The bodies of the slain Maoists were sent to the Rayagada district headquarters hospital for post-mortem.
The police has seized a huge cache of arms and ammunition from the demolished camp.
Reports from Kandhamal said a fierce gunfight was on between security personnel and the rebels at Kotagada. Kandhamal superintendent of police S. Praveen Kumar said additional forces have been sent to the area for conducting combing operations and stepping up patrolling.
In yet another incident of Maoist violence, the rebels on Sunday blew up the Bandhamunda railway signal post near Rourkela by triggering a bomb. This disrupted train services for over eight hours in the Chakradharpur-Rourkela and Rourkela-Hatia sections of South Eastern Railway.