DURGI: In what could be a major development in the ongoing saga of extremist violence in Andhra Pradesh, it has emerged that the Communist Party of India (Maoist), formerly the People's War Group, has acquired the expertise to cobble together rocket launchers with a range of 500 metres.

The police got a taste of this when the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), which is a part of the CPI (Maoist), hit the Durgi police station in Guntur district late on Tuesday night.

The PLGA commander of the `Liberated Palnadu' region, Suresh, who led the attack on the police station along with 30 others from a distance of 200 m, told The Hindu in an interview that what was "test-fired" at the police station was an indigenously made rocket launcher, the first of its kind according to him.

"The brain behind the development of the launchers, Madhu, the Nallamala region deputy commander (technical), is in the custody of the Nellore police for some days. If he is not released immediately such attacks will continue on all police stations in the district," said Suresh.

According to Suresh, the Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy Government is no different from the Chandrababu Naidu Government. Wrong government policies had led to 2,000 farmers committing suicide in the past year, he said. He threatened to "teach a lesson" to dealers of fake pesticides, fertilizers and seeds. The promissory notes lying with moneylenders charging high rates of interest would be torn up.

Against Pulichintala

"The PLGA will blast any structure that forms part of Pulichintala project, which is meant only for the third crop in the Krishna delta," Suresh said. He added that if the Government takes up the Dommarlagondi project that benefits the farmers of the Palnadu region, the Maoists would support it.

"The police are our main target and we will not torch RTC [State Road Transport Corporation] buses any more, but if the police try to use people as human shield, we will not hesitate to blow up buses as we did in Bandlamotu and Emmajigudem [in Bellamkonda mandal of Guntur district]," he said.

The war zone

The entire area from Durgi to Adigoppula in Guntur district was turned into a war zone on Tuesday night after Suresh, along with some 30 militants, attacked the police station.

They stopped all traffic on the Ongole-Hyderabad highway. They put up banners asking the police to stop their atrocities in the villages and even their visits to villages.

They planted landmines at culverts and along the roads, even placing some on the roads, and wired them up, linking them to remote controlled switches and other devices. They burnt vehicle tyres and put boulders on the State Highway. They planted more explosives in plastic buckets.

When news reporters, including this correspondent, arrived at one of the blockaded points early in the morning on Wednesday, three revolver-wielding Maoists emerged from the darkness.

They took the reporters to the Anjaneyaswamy temple, 1.2 km from the Durgi police station. Suresh was there to talk to the reporters. The cadres kept a watch on the movement of people who had gathered there. About 50 buses remained stranded nearby for a few hours.

Suresh, clad in a lungi, had several electronic gadgets around him. He was supervising the laying of wires and landmines.

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