Hazaribagh, May 11: The officer in charge of Charhi police station and a CRPF jawan were killed by the Maoists after a failed encounter at a hilly terrain this morning.

Three other jawans also sustained injuries during the gunfight that started in Dahudaag forest area of Charhi, about 25km from the district headquarters.

While trying to retaliate the rebels, a mortar fired by the men in khaki hit a house in a nearby village injuring a seven-year-old girl and four other villagers. Deputy inspector-general Ajay Kumar Singh confirmed injury of the villagers, including the girl.

He said that raids were going on in the area to arrest the rebels. According to sources, Krishna, a self-styled Maoist sub-zonal commander, and his team have been camping in Dahudaag for the past three days. Based on the information, Singh had constituted a team and asked Charhi officer-in-charge Vijay Thakur to move to Dahudaag forest this morning.

The team was divided in three groups and one led by Thakur scaled a hill to trace the Naxalites. Even as the jawans took position Thakur suddenly ordered all to get down from the hill. But as they were coming down, the Maoists opened firing at a place between Dahudaag and Bargeniya. Thakur and Prashant Patil, a jawan of 190A CRPF Battalion, were pierced by bullets. Both of them — in front row of the group — died on the spot about 10.15am.

The sources said that the 25-odd rebels were armed with AK-47 and Insas rifles. During post-mortem on the bodies at Sadar hospital, doctors confirmed that the bullets taken out from them were of AK-47.

The injured jawans included Mukesh Deep, Satyendra Kumar of Jharkhand Armed Police and Ramanand Tiwary of CRPF who was later shifted to Ranchi for better treatment.

The five members of the family injured by a police mortar were admitted to a local health centre.

The attack this morning came as a big blow to the police as Maoists also killed a wireless supervisor of Giridih police in Vishnugarh on May 7. In Vishnugarh, the Maoists declared that they would “now attack the men in khaki in daylight”. Naxalite violence has unleashed terror in and around the district in the past four days. Besides killing the Giridih policeman, the rebels had set ablaze expensive machines at two different construction sites on Friday midnight.

According to the sources, Krishna, the sub-zonal Maoist commander, is known to be the most notorious rebel leader operating in the area halting several projects, including that of railways, and burning cellphone towers of Airtel.