Thaindian News

Kolkata, Jan 23 (IANS) Top Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) leader Koteswar Rao alias Kishenji is very much within the reach of the joint forces in West Bengal’s West Midnapore district, a police officer said Saturday.
“Kishenji is very much within our reach. We don’t think he has been successful in fleeing the forest region of Lalgarh. According to our information, he is in Lalgarh itself,” the distict’s Superintendent of Police Manoj Verma said.

He said police Wednesday recovered a laptop, some SIM cards and a cache of firearms during an operation in the forest.

“We’ll send the laptop to the central forensic laboratory for further examination,” he said.

He said police reached very close to the forest area where Kishenji was taking shelter that time but the rebel leader escaped.

Verma said this was the fourth time when Kishenji successfully managed to give them a slip but the police team got hold of quite a few important items which will help them to zero in on the Maoist network in the coming days.

“We think it’s a good breakthrough as far as the anti-Maoist operations are concerned in the state. It’s always not very easy to catch Maoist leaders considering the low visibility level and inaccessible forest terrains of the region,” he said.

He said the operation was carried out on the basis of intelligence inputs and the information police had received from arrested Maoist cadres.

“The police-Maoist gun battle continued for almost 30 hours and there were at least 40 armed cadres with Kishenji,” Verma said.