Midnapore/Durgapur, Dec. 15: Maoists struck at a CRPF camp in Bankura’s Barikul this evening but suffered more casualty than the jawans with two of their men falling in a fierce gun battle that continued late tonight.

A gang of 60 to 70 extremists surrounded the paramilitary camp at Sarensokra village in Bengal’s rebel heartland around 7.30 pm and started firing.

Some 50 jawans then fired back, unlike their colleagues in West Midnapore’s Belpahari who had cowered inside their camp in the face of a fusillade last month.

A band of 70 Maoists led by a “tall young woman” had sabotaged a showpiece road scheme in Belpahari, torching eight trucks and payloaders, apparently to avenge the alleged rape of a tribal woman by a contractor working on the project and police’s reluctance to act against him.

Inspector-general (western zone) Arun Gupta confirmed tonight that two Maoist guerrillas died along with a CRPF jawan at Sarensokra.

“We are yet to identify the dead as the encounter is still on,” Gupta added.

The police said they could not recall an encounter of this magnitude on rebel territory in recent times.

The 50-odd jawans had been posted at Sarensokra, about 250 km from Calcutta, after the Maoists struck at Barikul on July 9, 2005.

Prabal Sengupta, the then officer-in-charge of Barikul police station, died when he tried to open a bag containing explosives that was left behind by Maoists on their way into a forest after killing two local CPM activists.

The same night, the ex- tremists also gunned down CPM leader Mahendra Mahato, whose house they raided in Purulia’s Bandwan, about 270 km from Calcutta.