■ By Kartik Lokhande :
THE Maoists must be called terrorists who have waged
a full-scale war against the country. For, a study of
some incidents in the past few years and the latest
inputs with the security grid of the country make it
clear that the Maoists are focussing on research and
development (R&D) in weapons, manufacture of certain weapons, training snipers
for operating AK-47 guns with
telescopes, and also having
‘para teams’ to target the security forces.
The Technical Department of CPI (Maoist) looks
after R&D, and manufactures Barrel Grenade Launcher
(BGL) weapons, BGL shells, single-shot weapons, 8
mm rifles, short weapons, magazines etc. Hiduma,
Central Committee member, has been monitoring
this particular unit. Maoists devoting much of effort
to procurement, tweaking, and manufacturing of
such weapons and IEDs has come across as a serious challenge for the security forces in the past some
time. Media reports around a year ago stated that in
some attacks in 2021-22, Maoists had fired 150-200
BGL shells at the security forces mostly in south Bastar
area of Chhattisgarh.
More dangerously, the Maoists have procured drone
also.
As per the information gathered by the Intelligence
sources, the Maoist leadership
has procured drone for surveillance of Central Reserve
Police Force (CRPF) camps. In
2019, a unified command of
Central security and Intelligence agencies had issued
‘shoot at sight’ orders to security forces deployed
across LeftWing Extremism affected States in the wake
of an incident wherein drones were seen hovering
over a strategically important CRPF camp in Sukma
district of Chhattisgarh. Later, in 2020, there were
reports of drones spotted
over three police posts in
Gadchiroli district including
Hedri, Kothi, and Gatta.
The
security forces had reportedly
fired at the flying object. Now,
the agencies have learned
that the Red terrorists are
planning to procure ‘lift
drones’ carrying heavy explosive material to attack the
CRPF camps. Already, they
have conducted trials of
drone flying over camps of
security forces in Chintalnar
and Jagurgonda.
Already, Maoists have
started deploying snipers
having telescopes mounted
on guns.
A cadre identified
by the name Katatam Deva
is said to be the best sniper
operating AK-47 with telescope, and he inflicted heavy
loss to security forces during
actions. The Sniper Team
batallion of Maoists has
trained 35-40 snipers in operating AK-47 with telescope.
Besides, it is learnt that the
CPI (Maoist) has
Dandakaranya Special Zonal
Committee SMC and battalion has formed ‘para teams’
for attacking camps of security forces and security forces
during TCOC. Each team
consists of two motorcycleborne members including
one rider and another pillion rider. The pillion rider
will be carrying AK-47 rifle.
The motorcycle-borne team
plans to move in front of
camps of security forces and
the pillion rider will open
burst fire to inflict maximum
damage to the forces. Sources
said that the Maoists have
procured some motorcycles
for such ‘para teams’, taking
advantage of the fact that in
many villages specially the
youngsters have purchased
motorcycles.
Apart from using square
box type directional mine
manufactured by their
Technical Department, the
Maoists are planning to
‘invite’ the police parties with
the help of GPS trackers sent
out by police. This seems to
reflect that the police strategy of sending someone with
GPS trackers to track Maoists,
has been busted and now
Maoists are trying to use the
same to lure cops into
ambushes.