New twist to old problem in Maoist-hit regions

On Saturday, team of the Chhattisgarh and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) broke new ground, opening a forward operating base in Sukma's Puverti village.

- Prawesh Lama

The move was as much tactical as symbolic.

Deep in south Chhattisgarh, Puverti has for the past three decades been an impregnable fortress for the CPI (Maoist); a village that has rarely, if ever, seen either the police or an administrative presence.

It has also been a key source of manpower for the rebels with over a hundred recruits in 20 years and home for two men who are cornerstones of Maoist presence in Chhattisgarh, considered the architects of one violent attack after the other, Madvi Hidma and Barse Deva, both commanders of the People Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) battalion No 1-the MaoPIC ist military formation that THE operates in the conflict-affected districts of Sukma, Bijapur, Dantewada and Bastar.

Yet Saturday was also evidence of the Maoist counter-reaction that this forward push is now eliciting attacks on forward camps set up by security forces, once common in battleground Bastar, but rare over the past two decades.

On February 17, as forces just finished setting up the camp in the middle of the dense forests, they found themselves under fire from two dozen armed Maoists.

"This was expected, and we hit them back hard," a senior police officer said. This time, the security personnel faced no casualties.

The attack was the third in a month. On January 30, three CRPF jawans were killed and 14 others injured in an attack at Sukma's Tekelgudem camp on the day that it opened. Two weeks before that, on January 16, Maoists attacked the Dharmaram camp in Bijapur district but there were no casualties in the exchange of fire, on the same day the camp opened.