Courtesy-Zee News
In the Visakhapatnam district, an exchange of fire with a Greyhound special forces took place which claimed the lives of at least six Maoists including two women along with a senior Maoist leader on Wednesday morning as reported by the Andhra Pradesh Police. The combing and search operations were on in the Theegalametta forest in Koyyuru Mandal in the Mampa police station area where the encounter took place, they added.
After the investigation, the police recovered a carbine, three .303 rifles, an AK-47 rifle and a country made revolver from the scene of the encounter. The fire was exchanged by the Maoists with the Odisha Police near Kulabeda village at the border of the state’s southernmost districts of Malkangiri and Koraput a day before the encounter.
Ashok and Ranadev, both Divisional Committee members are identified as the two among the four encountered on Wednesday morning, while the two women cadres are identified as Lalita and Paike. Dozens of lower-level leaders and Maoist cadres have either surrendered or have been arrested in Andhra Pradesh over the past several months.
After 2004 formation of the CPI- Maoists consisting of the People’s War Group along with the inclusion of the Maoist Communist Centre, the insurgency of rebels began. More than 200 districts across the country were dominated by the Naxalites at their peak, prompting then the Maoist movement was called “the single biggest internal-security challenge ever faced by our country” by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April 2006.