Thaindian News

Raipur, March 31 (IANS) Chhattisgarh’s anti-Maoist drive has left at least 90 guerrillas and nine policemen dead since July last year, Director General of Police Vishwa Ranjan said Wednesday.”The operation (Green Hunt) has been very successful, the Maoists are running from one forest to another to survive attacks by the forces. Till date we have killed at least 90 guerrillas but just nine policemen were martyred,” Ranjan told IANS.

“The operation is purely a state government offensive that was launched in July 2009 but people came to know about it only in September-October when the media reported it for the first time.

“The forces have penetrated deep into forests and are dominating areas that were earlier Maoist strongholds. We are dismantling the terror camps, all of them in Bastar,” he said.

Ranjan, a former additional director in the Intelligence Bureau, said dozens of guerrillas had sneaked to other states from the Bastar jungles since January to survive the security crackdown.

He claimed that people in Bastar’s interiors would not earlier reveal much to policemen about Maoist activities due to threats and fear.

But now police “are getting handy information and better cooperation” from them, the officer said.

Chhattisgarh’s mineral rich Bastar region, spread over about 40,000 sq km, is made up of five districts: Bijapur, Kanker, Narayanpur, Bastar and Dantewada.

It saw some 1,600 deaths in violence linked to Maoist insurgency since June 2005 with the launch of the controversial state-backed civil militia movement called Salwa Judum.

But officials that Maoist violence has subsidised heavily in 2010 because police are making inroads into the forests of Bastar where the rebels had held sway since the late 1980s.