Maoists blow up Orissa school building

Bhubaneswar, July 6 – Maoist guerrillas blew up a school building in Orissa’s Malkangiri district early Tuesday.



About 30-40 rebels blasted the school building at MV 21 village, about 640 km from here, when no one was inside, a district police official told IANS.



The attack came ahead of a two-day nationwide shutdown called by the rebels from July 7 to protest the killing their top leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad in Andhra Pradesh last week.



IANS



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Maoists blow up school building in Orissa

MALKANGIRI: Armed Maoists blew up a school building in Orissa's Malkangiri district early today.

About 100 heavily-armed rebels stormed into MV-21 village under Kalimela police station area, about 50 km from here, in the early hours and blew up the building, causing extensive damage to the structure, police said.

The school building was targeted as the Maoists felt it would be utilised for accommodating security forces during anti-Naxal operation, police said.

Security personnel were sent to the village in order to conduct combing operation to track the ultras, they said.

The attack came a day after the ultras blew up a panchayat office building and a godown in Kalimela area of the Maoist-hit district.

The rebels have blasted about six government buildings in the district in last one month

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Top Maoist leader killed in India

Indian police say they have killed a senior Maoist leader during a battle with the rebels in a densely forested region of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Cherukuri Rajkumar, commonly known as "Azad," was reportedly shot dead on Friday as he was trying to cross into the neighbouring state of Maharashtra, P Pramod Kumar, a senior Andhra Pradesh police officer said.

But Maoists denied the claim and said that Azad, a member of the group's central committee, was killed in police custody.

In a telephone call to journalists, Gudsa Usendi, a spokesman for the Maoists, accused police of killing Azad after capturing him a day earlier in the forest, nearly 300km north of Hyderabad.

Associated with the Maoist movement for more than 35 years, Azad was allegedly involved in attempts on the lives of two former state chief ministers, and carried a reward of 1.2 million rupees ($25,000) on his head.


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Top Maoist killed in A.P.

The Andhra Pradesh police on Friday said it had shot dead top naxalite Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, along with an unidentified cohort, in an exchange of fire in Adilabad district, close to the State's border with Maharashtra.

The death of Azad, a member and spokesman of the Central Committee of the CPI (Maoist) and a member of the Polit Bureau, has dealt a big blow to the Maoist movement in India. He was an ideologue who had specialised in field-craft as well.

Even as some sources questioned the encounter theory, the police said the gunfight lasted more than three hours. An AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol and two kitbags were found at the scene.

The alleged encounter took place on a 500-metre-high hillock 3 km from the nearest motorable road. With the monsoon having set in, the forest had become lush green, and the tribals had started farming operations. Some of them were tilling the land, but none would speak to The Hindu about the encounter.

Azad, around 58 years old, hailed from Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh. He went underground in 1979. He was arrested in 1975 and 1978 and jumped bail. He carried a reward of Rs. 12 lakh on his head.

He had apparently been tasked with reviving the Maoist movement in Andhra Pradesh. He was a member of the Urban Sub-Committee (USCO) and was in charge of the South Western Regional Bureau (SWRB) of Maoists, which coordinates the movement in Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Police sources familiar with the Maoists' pattern of activity said Friday's encounter deaths could lead to reprisal attacks in Maoist strongholds in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. They, however, said the death of Azad had broken the aura of invincibility that the Maoists were seeking to create by means of their recent brutal strikes against the security forces.

Adilabad Superintendent of Police P. Promod Kumar told journalists that the police had launched combing operations following intelligence inputs that a team of Maoists had moved into the forests from Maharashtra. One of the police teams encountered a group of 25 to 30 rebels in the hilly terrain near Sarkepally, a village 15 km from the border with Maharashtra.

“Our team… cautioned them to surrender, but it came under fire, forcing it to retaliate,” the officer said.

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