Maoist Major Incidents 2008

Andhra Pradesh

January 26: CPI-Maoist cadres shot dead three persons, accusing them of being police spies, at Borlagunda village in the Karimnagar district. According to the police, a group of 15 Maoists entered the village at around 2am (IST), picked up the three from their homes and gunned them down after branding them "police informers". The three had been associated with the Maoist outfit in the past.

Jharkhand

April 8: Nine persons were killed and two others injured when the CPI-Maoist cadres fired on a vehicle and subsequently set it ablaze in the Semra forest area under Palkot police station of Gumla district. Among the victims were Bhado Singh, a member of Shanti Sena (Peace Force), a police backed resistance force, and his family members. Singh and his family members were proceeding to Palkot from Bhagina village.

April 1: Joint teams of the Jharkhand Police and the CRPF personnel in an encounter killed eight CPI-Maoist cadres, including a woman and a ‘sub zonal commander’ of the outfit, at Bandu village under Ranka Police Station in the Garhwa district. The Director General of Police (DGP), V. D. Ram, told, "We had received a tip off about the movement of Maoists. One SLR, four 303 rifles, three 315 rifles, one sten-gun, one DBBL gun, one country made revolver and large number of live cartridges besides naxal literatures and belongings of the Maoists were recovered." Of the eight slain Maoists, one was identified as Basant Yadav, a ‘sub-zonal commander’, while two others are suspected to be Rajesh Paswan and Lallan Thakur, both ‘area commanders’.

CPI-Maoist cadres killed four civilians at Poradih-Chenpur village in the Khunti district. Dead bodies of the victims whose throats were slit were recovered on April 2. A hand-written note left behind by the Maoists claimed the four persons were being ‘punished’ for indulging in robbery. The Maoists also claimed to have taken away a hand-made pistol and three motorbikes from the slain villagers.

February 14: Seven CPI-Maoist cadres, including Vikash, an accused in the killing of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) Member of Parliament Sunil Mahto, were killed in an encounter with security forces at Phuljore in the East Singhbhum district. Deputy Inspector General of Police Manoj Mishra stated that two women cadres were among the slain Maoists. The encounter followed an exchange of fire between the Maoists and the Nagarik Suraksha Samiti (NSS), a vigilance organisation formed by villagers with support of the district police, in which two Maoists were killed. When a joint team of the Central Reserve Police Force and local police personnel rushed to the area to assist the NSS, an encounter took place with the Maoists in which five extremists were killed. Eight weapons and some live cartridges were recovered from the encounter site.

January 11: Three CPI-Maoist cadres, including a ‘zonal commander’ of the CPI-Maoist, Mahendra Karwa, were killed in a fierce three hour gun battle with security forces in Chainpur hills of the Palamau district, the police said. The gunfight took place when patrolling Jharkhand police and CRPF personnel spotted 10 Maoists on January 11-night. The police recovered two rifles, live cartridges and explosives from the slain cadres.

Bihar

April 13: Six persons, including five security force personnel and a porter, were killed in an attack by the CPI-Maoist cadres at Jhajha railway station in the Jamui district. A group of 200 Maoists attacked the crowded railway station, and looted 27 3.15 rifles, six self-loading rifles, two carbines and 898 rounds of ammunition from the GRP armoury. The Maoists also damaged an ATM of the State Bank of India in an attempt to loot cash, but had failed. They had also made an unsuccessful attempt to loot cash from a locker in the railway station.

April 10: CPI-Maoist cadres killed six persons belonging to the Sashastra People’s Morcha (SSM) in the Tardih forest of Rohtas district. The slain persons, natives of Barachatti and Mohanpur blocks of Gaya district, were former members of the CPI-Maoist and had formed the SSM to assist the police. Maoist pamphlets charging the slain persons with "betraying the parent organisation and serving as police informers", were found at the incident site.

February 21: Suspected CPI-Maoist cadres shot dead three farmers at Pipra village under the jurisdiction of the Darpa police Station in the East Champaran district. Heavily armed Maoists attacked the village around midnight and shot dead three persons said to be farmers, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) A. K. Singh said. However, Times of India quoted the Raxaul DSP Santosh Kumar Gupta as saying that it was not a Maoist attack, rather it was the result of the clash between Community Party of India- Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML) and the late landlord's Harendra Singh’s henchmen.

January 13: Police claimed to have killed six cadres of the CPI-Maoist in an encounter at Bangudwa Naktaia hills in the Gaya district. The Deputy Superintendent of Police, Balram Kumar Choudhry, said that dead bodies of the slain Maoists could not be recovered from the encounter site as these were taken away by their colleagues. The encounter is reported to have occurred following a police raid on a Maoist hideout. The encircled Maoists, instead of laying down their arms, opened fire on the raiding party forcing the police to return fire in which six Maoists were killed.

January 1: At least four policemen were killed and another sustained injuries in an attack by the CPI-Maoist cadres on Bariapur police post in the Munger district. More than 100 Maoists attacked the police post, which was keeping a vigil over a picnic spot in Rishikund, where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate the New Year. According to sources, the Maoists did not disturb the tourists and opened indiscriminate fire on policemen killing four on the spot.

Chhattisgarh

March 20: Three Salwa Judum activists were killed by the CPI-Maoist cadres in a forested stretch in southern Chhattisgarh. Maoists reportedly abducted the deceased from a relief camp at Mathwara village in the Bijapur district and three days later killed them by slitting their throats.

March 18: Joint security forces of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh killed 17 CPI-Maoist cadres, including seven women inside the Darelli forest under Pamedu police station in the Bijapur district. The encounter followed an aerial survey that revealed an ongoing plenum of the Maoists attended by 60 cadres. Khammam Superintendent of Police D.S. Chauhan confirmed that those killed in the encounter were mostly from Khammam district. Weapons including an AK-47, three Self Loading Rifles (SLRs), landmines and many single shot weapons were recovered following two spells of the ambushes by the SFs. Police sources said more than 500 shots were fired by both sides in two spells — one at 9 AM and another four hours later. While 13 Maoists were killed in the first spell of encounter, four others were killed during the second assault.

February 18: The Special Task Force (STF) shot dead 10 CPI-Maoists inside Adesmetta forest under Gangalur police station in the Bijapur district after they were attacked by the Maoists who used landmines and automatic gunfire.

Three Central Reserve Police Force head constables and an equal number of constables were killed in an encounter with the Maoists in Tadkel hill of Mirtur police station area of Bijapur district, Inspector General of Police (Bastar range), Rajinder Kumar Vij, said. Three Maoists were also killed during the encounter, which began when a group of 60 CRPF personnel on a search mission were attacked by the Maoists with landmine blasts and machinegun fire in the area. "There were about 300 ultras," Vij said. Maoists escaped with the guns of the slain CRPF soldiers, he added.

February 2: Four Central Reserve Police Force personnel, including a Sub-Inspector, were killed by the cadres of the CPI-Maoist in an ambush in the Narayanpur district.

January 7: Police in the Kanker district claimed to have killed seven hardcore CPI-Maoist cadres following a raid on a camp of the outfit in a forested area under Koyalibera police station. Pawan Deo, Deputy Iinspector General of Police (Kanker range), told IANS, "We found heavy blood stains at the encounter site and enough evidence that rebels' bodies have been carried deep inside the forest during the 90-minute fierce gun battle." The police recovered three rifles, 36 detonators, four bundles of wires used for landmine blasts, pipe bombs, tiffin bombs, Maoist uniform and literature.

Orissa

February 17: At least 20 cadres of the CPI-Maoist, including some women cadres, were killed during the ongoing combing operation by security forces (SFs) in the border area of Nayagarh-Ganjam-Kandhamal districts. SFs, however, lost three of their personnel in the combing operation launched on a massive scale in different sensitive pockets in Nayagarh, Ganjam, Gajapati, Kandhamal and Rayagada districts. The combing operations were started on February 16 after hundreds of Maoists raided the police establishments in Nayagarh district, killing 15 persons, including 13 policemen, and decamping with huge quantities of arms and ammunition on February 15-night. "We have information about killing of 20 Maoists and three jawans of Special Operation Group (SOG) during the combing operation," Home Secretary T. K. Mishra said. Without disclosing the exact location where the Maoists were killed by security forces, he said "reports are received from different places including the Gansar Hills". Mishra said sophisticated equipment like night (vision) binoculars, global positioning system (GPS) and other gadgets were being used to monitor movement of the extremists inside the dense forests. Two choppers were being used for movement of personnel in order to coordinate the operation, Mishra added.

February 15: 14 police personnel and a civilian were killed and four policemen were wounded when around 500 heavily armed cadres of the CPI-Maoist attacked a Police Training School (PTS), the district armoury and district police station in co-ordinated attacks near Daspalla in the Nayagarh district at around 10:45pm (IST). They also took away a cache of arms and ammunition in a bus they had hijacked in the district, about 100-km from State capital Bhubaneswar. Police sources claimed that three Maoists were also killed in the incident. However, their bodies have not been recovered and it is suspected that the Maoists before fleeing took away the bodies of their slain comrades. Before launching the attack, the Maoists, speaking in Hindi and Telugu, and suspected to be from neighbouring Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, announced that they would not harm the public as their target was the police. The police suspect it to be the handy work of Sabyasachi Panda, the CPI-Maoist Andhra-Orissa ‘secretary’. Meanwhile, a red alert has been sounded in the State and the police have started combing operations in the neighbouring districts of Phulbani, Gajapati, Rayagada and Malkangiri in Orissa. The attack was the first of its kind in coastal Orissa. The district armoury and PTS were virtually emptied by the Maoists, the police said. Though Nayagarh district had been unaffected by the Maoist insurgency, the extremists are active in the neighbouring Gajapati and parts of Kandhamal district. Nayagarh is also reportedly the home town of Maoist leader Sabysachi Panda.

West Bengal

April 13: Suspected CPI-Maoist cadres killed three CPI-M activists in the Salboni area of West Midnapore district. The CPI-M zonal committee later said that one of the slain persons was the party’s local leader and the other two were supporters of the party. The killed persons were among the eight persons supervising earth-digging work under the rural employment programme when they were abducted by the Maoists. While five persons were later released, bodies of the three persons were recovered from a nearby forest.

Maharashtra

February 22: Four Naxalites and a police constable, identified as Shrinivas Yeliga Dandigwar, from the C-60 district police team, were killed in an exchange of fire between extremists and police in the Gadchiroli district. "We have recovered all the four bodies and the identification of the deceased is on," Additional Director General of Police (Anti-Naxalites operation) Pankaj Gupta told. The encounter took place at Tophar near Bhamragarh area. Police also recovered three .303 rifles and one self-loading rifle.

February 21: Three Naxalites, including platoon dalam ‘commander’ Chaitu were killed in Sironch area of the Gadchiroli district during an exchange of fire between the extremists and the police party. Gadchiroli Superintendent of Police, Rajesh Pradhan had claimed that the body of Chaitu was recovered while the Naxalites managed to carry away the remaining bodies.