Five of them were arrested from Lanji area and six from Birsa, said IG Balaghat G Janardhan told TOI

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh police on Friday arrested 11 suspected militia members of the CPI Maoists from forest areas of Balaghat district. Arrests were made on specific intelligence inputs.

Five of them were arrested from Lanji area and six from Birsa, said IG Balaghat G Janardhan told TOI.

“They are members of the sangam dalam entrusted with task of providing logistic support to main cadres,” said the officer. They are active members and had been involved in distributing pamphlets and intelligence gathering for the Maoists.

“Their role is also being probed in connection with killing of police informers and setting afire trucks in the region besides threating tendu patta contractors,” IG said. A joint combing operation was carried out by the CrPF and Hawk force of state police. Several Maoist literatures, banners and ration were confiscated from their possession. They are alleged to be directly associated with the Malajkhand and Darekasa Dalam, said sources.

Noteworthy that Communist Party of India (Maoists) has carved out a new zone for its operations — Gadchiroli–Rajnandgaon-Balaghat (GRB), straddling the border trijunction of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Reports of the new Maoist battle order has spurred security forces in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh to intensify operations.

A battalion of MP’s counter-terror group Hawk Force was moved deep into the Chhattisgarh forest. The old North Gadchiroli-Gondia-Balaghat and Rajnandgaon (NGGBR) division has now been converted into GRB zone/division, and Maoists and are already surveying and recruiting in this region, said police sources. This will drive security agencies back to the drawing board to realign forces according to the new setup.

Balaghat, Rajnandgaon, Gondia and Gadchiroli come under a division of Maharashtra State Committee of CPI (Maoists). Officials engaged in anti-Maoist operations say the new GRB division is headed by Surendra, Dama and Santosh, who were associated with the Malajkhand and Tada dalams for long.

This worrying information was revealed, a member of the cultural wing of CPI(Maoist), who was arrested from Gondia district of Maharashtra in April 2017.

The Tada and Malajkhand Dalams are active in Balaghat region of MP. A 20-year-old student was executed by Maoists in Balaghat in April 2016 on suspicion of being a police informer. There hasn’t been any more Maoist bloodshed in MP since then, but the administration is taking no chances.

At a meeting chaired by home minister Rajnath Singh recently, the Madhya Pradesh government asked for new choppers for anti-Naxalite operations. State home minister Bhupendra Singh said helicopters were immediately needed for deployment of security forces and other operations.

After a prolonged struggle, the state government has recently managed to get Mandla district added to the list of Maoist-affected areas in the country.

“The state government wanted to include at least seven districts as ‘LWE- affected’, eyeing a greater chunk from security-related expenditure scheme, the home ministry considered Balaghat only,” said sources. It was after scores of fresh incidents were reported around Mandla that MHA agreed to add it while removing 44 districts across the country. Districts covered under SRE scheme get funds for security-related expenditure like transportation, communication, hiring of vehicles, stipend to surrendered Maoists, construction of infrastructure for forces.

The last major achievement of the security forces was the arrest of rebel commander Dilip Guha from Balaghat, who was also said to be a part of the conspiracy behind the 2013 Bastar bloodbath that wiped out the Congress frontline leadership of Chhattisgarh, say sources.

