Kerala police kill Maoist in Wayanad forest gun battle

Mangalore Today News Network

Wayanad, Nov 03, 2020:    The Kerala police on Tuesday said they had killed at least one suspected Maoist in a gun battle at Padinjarathara forests in Wayanad.

 

Top officials told The Hindu that Thunderbolt Commands were in “hot pursuit” of the rest of armed insurgents who had broken out of their encirclement and retreated into the forests contiguous with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

The Wayanad police were on the spot to recover the body. The commandos have recovered a bolt action rifle and rounds of expended assault rifle ammunition. The government has ordered a magisterial enquiry into the incident.

The commandos have suffered no casualties in the fire fight that unfolded around 4.30 a.m. and continued sporadically till 7 a.m, according to initial reports received at the Police Headquarters here.

Increased activity

The gun battle occurred against the backdrop of increased activity by various Maoist ‘dalams’ aligned with the Western Ghats Zonal Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

According to initial reports, the police had inserted a squad of eight commands to interdict the armed groups to deny them operational space in the forested district.

By one account, the commandos surprised the Maoists and called out to the group to surrender. However, the police encountered irregular fire from the dense undergrowth.

The commandos returned fire in a bid to pin down the Maoists and force their surrender. However, the armed group staged a fighting retreat and disappeared into the forests, leaving behind one of their dead.

Dark and rainy conditions

Officials said the shootout had occurred in dark and rainy conditions. The Thunderbolts carried night vision equipment, GPS and rations to operate continuously for several days in the forest. The pursuing commandos were proceeding with caution so as not to get ambushed by possible booby traps laid by the withdrawing Maoists, a senior official said.

State law enforcement has alerted their counterparts in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The police were scouring tribal settlements and checking hospitals to find out whether they had admitted persons with gunshot injuries.

2019 shootout

In October 2019, the Kerala police had shot dead three Maoists, including a woman, in Wayanad. The shootout had caused quite an uproar with the Communist Party of India (CPI) terming the incident as “cold-blooded extra-judicial murder”.

A CPI fact-finding mission had accused the police of shooting dead the Maoists without giving them a chance to surrender and while they had food.

Similarly, the CPI and the Congress had accused the police of shooting suspected Maoist C. P. Jaleel dead near a forest resort in Vythiri in Wayanad in March last year when he attempted to flee them.

The encounters had prompted the Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala to denounce Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for giving “free rein to the police to kill Maoists with impunity”. In contrast, the Oommen Chandy government had arrested and brought them to book, he had said.

Courtesy:The Hindu