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Maoist top gun injured in exchange of fire

KORAPUT: Even as left wing extremists killed a former sarpanch in Orissa’s Koraput district suspecting him to be a police informer, a top naxalite commander was injured in an exchange of fire with security forces in neighbouring Malkanagiri district, police said Wednesday.

Police sources said some 50 armed naxalites entered Nangalbeda village bordering Andhra Pradesh and summoned a 60-year-old local businessman, identified as Markanda Choudhury, to centre of the village. Accusing him of being a police informer, they cut his throat with an axe while villagers were terrorised, police officials quoting villagers said.

Before they carried out the killing, they had also been to another bordering village Kesla, from where five businessmen were picked up and made to walk for a long distance. The five businessmen, belonging to the Sundhi community, were also tied down along with Choudhury. All of them were beaten up severely by members of the CPI (Maoist) for allegedly not listening to their diktats.

Police teams have rushed Nangalbeda village. In another development, Ashok , who was said to be the commander of the Motu People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army, was injured in an exchange of fire with the police near Kondapali forests under Motu police station in Malkangiri district on Tuesday night. Personnel of the Special Operation Group and the Central Reserve Police Force were engaged in a gunbattle with the naxalites for more than two hours. Some 20 other naxalites were also said to have sustained injuries.

Bhubaneswar Staff Reporter writes: In a swift action, the Jajpur district police took three suspected naxalites into custody while they were attending on a 21-year-old girl at a nursing home here. The girl has been identified as Nanika Jamda, said to be a companion of Anna Reddy, the suspected Orissa chief of the CPI(ML) Janashakti group. The girl was admitted in the Kalinga Hospital on Jan. 28 as she was suffering from cerebral malaria. It is believed that one of the arrested was Anna Reddy. The Jajpur police had been on the trail of Jamda and three of her attendants for quite some time.

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