By IANS
Raipur : A Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) team assisted by state police personnel unearthed a huge cache of explosives and grenades from a forest in Chhattisgarh, a senior police officer said Wednesday.
The arms were found Tuesday night in Kanshiwara area under Bakarkatta police station in Rajnandgaon district, 210 km from state capital Raipur.
“On a tip off from a Maoist rebel arrested recently, a CRPF and state police team raided Kanshiwara forest region and recovered the biggest ever explosives haul in recent times in the Rajnandgaon district bordering Maharashtra state,” district police chief Amit Kumar told IANS over phone.
The explosives recovered include at least two-dozen grenades and a huge quantity of blasting material, arms and parts of guns. The police suspect Maoists had stored the arms to execute a deadly attack on them.
“After recovery, we have stepped up combing operations early morning Wednesday in the Rajnandgaon forest stretches to locate and recover more such explosives if there are any,” Kumar said, adding “we believe leftists radicals might have set up an explosives factory in the district”.
Chhattisgarh is one of the states hard-hit by Maoist violence where about 50,000 people, mostly from tribal families, have been rendered homeless and settled in over a dozen government run relief camps due to threats from Maoists since tribals launched a civil militia movement, Salwa Judum, in June 2005.