Raipur , April 8: At least eight Naxals were believed to have been killed while ambushing the CRPF combing party at Chintalnar, in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, on Tuesday, the police said here on Thursday.

“We have received an intercept that revealed that at least eight Maoists were killed and half-a-dozen other ultras sustained bullet injuries during their deadly attack against the security forces in the forest in Chintalnar,” a senior police officer involved in the anti-Naxal operation in the state told this newspaper.

“We have also received credible information that the fleeing Maoists who had participated in the Chintalnar ambush are now trying to sneak into Andhra Pradesh and Orissa in separate groups. Some of them are tracked in the forest between Kistaram-Gollapali-Konta stretches in Chhattisgarh, near the Andhra Pradesh border,” he disclosed.
“The difficult hilly terrain, dense forests and fear of mining of the area by the ultras are creating bottlenecks in the hot pursuit of the fleeing guerrillas,” he added.
Meanwhile, security forces on Thursday recovered half-a-dozen powerful pressure bombs following a massive search operation in the Chintalnar forest. The search operation, jointly carried out by the CRPF and Chhattisgarh police, also led to the seizure of cable wires and other explosive materiel, he said. The police, however, clarified that no one had been arrested in connection with the Chintalnar massacre so far.
 
Rabindra Nath Choudhury