By IANS,
Lalgarh (West Bengal):Suspected Maoist rebels killed three activists of Jharkhand Party-Naren (JKP-N) as the West Bengal government conceded Thursday that the security operation to flush out the Left-wing extremists from this trouble-torn region has not yielded satisfactory results.
District Magistrate Narayan Swarup Nigam told IANS that the bodies of three JKP-N activists were found on the National Highway 9 near Magurai village under Binpur police station.
“All three were workers of the JKP-N. One of them was gunned down. The bodies of the other two bore injury marks inflicted with sharp weapons,” he said.
Citing police reports, Nigam said Maoists were believed to have carried out the attack.
With the recovery of these three bodies, the number of those killed by the Leftist ultras has risen to nine since the state police and central paramilitary forces began a joint operation June 18 to flush out the Maoists from the Lalgarh belt of West Bengal.
The rebels had also abducted four policemen recently. Two of them remain untraced.
As news of the killings reached the corridors of power in Kolkata, senior bureaucrats and police officers held a high-level meeting to discuss loopholes in the ongoing operation and the remedial measures.
“Initially, we received significant success in establishing the rule of the law in Lalgarh, but in the latter half of the operation the result has not been very satisfactory,” Home Secretary Ardhendu Sen told reporters after the parleys.
“As a matter of fact, we have seen that incidents of killing and abduction are taking place there. We’ve also not been able to arrest those top-rung Maoist leaders who have taken shelter in the inhospitable forest terrains of Lalgarh,” Sen said.
“As the central paramilitary forces would not stay in Lalgarh permanently, we’ll have to plan for a time-bound operation, say for next 15-25 days, to improve the law and order situation in the region,” Sen said.
State’s ruling Left Front (LF) chairman and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) secretary Biman Bose expressed concern at the exodus from his party following heightened activities of the Maoists.
“The Maoists are adopting a hit-and-run policy and they will continue to do so,” he said. “We are concerned about the exodus of our party cadres in the area due to the terror perpetrated by the Leftwing extremist group,” he said.
Lalgarh, about 200 km west of Kolkata, has been on the boil since November last year when a landmine exploded on the route of the convoy of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and two then central ministers-Ram Vilas Paswan and Jitin Prasada.
Alleging police atrocities after the blast, the Maoists, alongside the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), launched an agitation and turned the area into a virtual ‘free zone’ by torching police camps and offices of the ruling communists and driving out the civil administration.
Maoists are active in areas under 21 police stations in the state’s three western districts – West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia.