Kodaikanal (Tamil Nadu), April 19 (IANS) A 30-year-old man was gunned down by a members of a special task force of the Tamil Nadu police Saturday near the holiday resort of Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu’s Dindigul district. The alleged Maoist, Naveen Prasanth, was killed and another man injured in an encounter that the security forces had with a group of five on the Kodaikanal-Palani road, nearly 600 km south of Chennai, the police said.

Three of the alleged Maoists escaped, police said, adding that the dead man “had received arms training at a Naxal camp at Dharmapuri and was an expert in handling various sophisticated arms”.

Following reports of Maoists’ movements in the forests of the Western Ghats, police have stepped up search for them in the Nilgiris, Dharmapuri, Dindigul and Theni districts of Tamil Nadu and in the jungles of Kodaikanal, Periyakulam and Palani hill areas.

Police sources said that local Maoists had celebrated the victory of the Nepal Maoists in last week’s elections by distributing sweets.