24 Maoists, commando die in shootout with police

Police yesterday killed at least 24 rebels in a shoot-out in eastern India, an officer said, the deadliest such incident this year in a long-running Maoist insurgency.
Police said they ambushed a meeting of 30 to 40 Maoists in a forest near the border of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, triggering a gunbattle.
“Now 24 bodies of the Maoists have been recovered. The search operation is still on,” sub-inspector C K Dharua said by phone from Malkangiri district in Odisha where the attack occurred.
A Greyhounds policed commando also died in the shootout.
Dharua had earlier confirmed 18 deaths but warned the toll could rise as “there was a large number of people at the meeting.”
A top Maoist leader and his son were suspected to be among those killed, police said.
Two police officers were also injured in the shootout that last about an hour.
Weapons including four AK-47s and three self-loading rifles were recovered from the site, some 640km from the state capital Bhubaneswar, Dharua said.
The rebels belonged to the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist.
Top Maoist leader Ramakrishna alias RK is said to have escaped during the fighting.
Andhra Pradesh Director General of Police N Sambasiva Rao said a helicopter was rushed to the scene to bring the injured personnel as well as Maoists to Visakhapatnam for treatment.
He said the police asked the Maoists to surrender but they opened fire, forcing the police to retaliate.
India’s Maoist insurgency began in the 1960s, inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, and has cost thousands of lives.
The rebels, described by former prime minister Manmohan Singh as India’s most serious internal security threat, say they are fighting authorities for land, jobs and other rights for poor tribal groups.
Yesterday’s s gunbattle comes after 10 paramilitary commandos in Bihar were killed in July after suspected Maoist rebels ambushed their convoy and set off a series of homemade bombs.
In March, suspected rebels triggered a powerful landmine blast in central Chhattisgarh, killing seven policemen.
The South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) website, which tracks separatist trends, showed yesterday’s s attack as the deadliest Maoist incident this year.
The insurgency has claimed more than 7,000 lives between 2005 and 2016, according to SATP.
The Maoists had not yet issued a statement on the incident via the website they have used in the past.
But Maoist sympathiser and author Varavara Rao cast doubt on the police version of yesterday’s events, saying it was likely officers simply ambushed the rebels, with no little time for them to return fire.
“With (the) information (that) you have, (you have) gone and hurled grenades there and then they have fired in self-defense,” Rao told the NDTV network.
He demanded that a murder case be filed against the police involved in the attack.
“Did the Maoists carry out any attack after the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh? Then where was the need for this fake encounter?” asked Rao, a leader of Veerasam, a body of revolutionary writers.
Rao also demanded an inquiry into the incident by a sitting judge of the high court.
The rebels operate in at least 20 Indian states but are most active in the forested and resource-rich areas of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra.
They draw recruits from tribal communities whose members are often desperately poor and living in underdeveloped areas neglected by successive governments.
Government critics say attempts to end the revolt through tough security offensives are doomed to fail, and the real solution is better governance and development of the region.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been seeking to stem the insurgency by earmarking development funds for revolt-hit areas and improving policing.
Last year, Modi urged Maoists to put down their guns and take up ploughs, saying “violence has no future.”
The remote forests of Malkangiri district are a major transit point for rebels because it borders Maoist-strongholds in Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, the Hindu newspaper said.