The police in Balaghat and Sidhi-Shahdol belt in south-western Madhya Pradesh has been put on high alert following reports of Naxalite movement in Sidhi and Balaghat districts after Monday’s Naxal attack on a civilian bus in the Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh.
Madhya Pradesh director-general of police S.K. Raut told this newspaper on Tuesday that the Mada police station in Sidhi district has received news about movement of a large number of Naxalites. Movement of about 30 to 40 Naxalites was also reported from the forests of Balaghat district, he added.
The state police chief did not rule out the possibility of Naxalites hitting targets in Madhya Pradesh and said that the state police is ready to counter them. The police has been put on high alert in the affected zone, he said while pointing out that a large police force, almost half a battalion in numbers, has been trained at different places and also by the Andhra Greyhounds. Most of these security personnel trained in jungle warfare have been posted in Balaghat district, he said.
The Naxalites could have entered Balaghat from Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh or Bhandara in Maharashtra and another group of Naxalites could have reached Sidhi from the Korba-Ambikapur forests in Chhattisgarh via Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh, a police officer said, adding that it was after the murder of state forest minister Likhiram Kavre in December 1999 that the Naxalites changed course and had decided to treat the forested territory in Madhya Pradesh as a safe haven while they continued with their terror attacks in neighbouring Chhattisgarh and focused all their moves towards building the Red corridor.
stretching from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand to West Bengal and even Nepal.