Joint forces foiled a major Naxal attack by seizing huge cache of arms, ammunitions and explosives, billed as the “biggest” ever recovery of Maoist arms dumps in India, in the jungles of
Rajnandgaon district in Chhattisgarh, bordering insurgency-hit Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra, early on Sunday morning, the police said.
Incidentally, the seizure comes barely 48 hours before the visit of Union home minister P. Chidambaram to Chhattisgarh to review anti-Naxal measures.
Acting on “specific” intelligence inputs, a joint team of Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra police as well as jawans of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) conducted pre-dawn search operations in Guwadland and Jhadikheri jungles under Churia region, nearly 60 km from district headquarters town of Rajnandgaon and recovered the arms and explosives in six dumps in the area.
“To my knowledge, this is the largest haul of arms and ammunitions and explosives of Naxals seized,” inspector general of police (IG), Durg range, Mr R.K.Vij told this newspaper. The seizures included 3 .12 bore guns, 368 gelatin rods, 31 detonators, 19 hand grenades, 1500 live cartridges, six claymore mines, one very high frequency (VHF) wireless set with batteries among others.