Mind the target

Dudhkundi, March 8: Security per- sonnel in battle gear crept through thickets and crawled under thorny shrubs in search of Maoists yesterday only to find themselves surrounded by men in vantage positions, armed to the teeth and ready to pull the trigger.

A shootout did not follow, though.

The rebel busters had been hemmed in by Indian Air Force personnel who thought they were guerrillas who had sneaked into its heavily guarded ground bombing zone in Dudhkundi, about 170 km from Calcutta.

Some 20 jawans of the Rapid Action Force and the state armed police from a Jhargram outpost raided the forests of Balibhasa around 10 am yesterday. They did not realise that they had trespassed into the air force enclosure.

The air force guards ordered them to drop the guns and raise their arms. The inspector leading the raiding team, S.R. Jash, asked his men to do as told.

He explained to the guards later that they were out looking for Maoists. Air force authorities in Kalaikunda, about 35 km from here, contacted the Jhargram subdivisional headquarters and confirmed their identity before letting them go ? on Maoist hunt.

Police officers said the raid team did not seek the air force’s permission for the raid on its premises that has a ground bombing zone, an air traffic control and godowns.

“We did not know that the permission had not been taken. We were slowly moving ahead in the forest when another man in uniform emerged out of nowhere and I was suddenly staring into the nozzle of an automatic rifle. I was so shocked that I almost pulled the trigger of my gun,” a RAF jawan said.

Additional superintendent police (operations) Rabindranath Mukho- padhyay, however, said: “It was all due to a misunderstanding. It has been sorted out. We have warned the officer concerned that such an incident should not occur again.”

Jash refused to comment.

An air force officer who chose to remain anonymous said the guards spotted the trespassers at least a kilometre ahead before confronting them. “We had no idea that it was a police team. Seeing the men in uniform, we thought they were Maoists and were ready to take them on. They should have come with proper permission.”