Jamshedpur, Jan. 5: Dhanai Kisku’s battle against the Maoists may have ended, but the 250 members that constitute the Nagarik Suraksha Samiti are determined to fight on. The void, however, will be difficult to fill.

Shanka Chandra Hembrom, the president of the NSS, told The Telegraph that Kisku’s killing is bound to have an impact on the group’s activities. “He was our strength. We cannot replace him but we will fight terror vigorously. We will move ahead without Kisku, who not only helped us organise ourselves but also taught us ways to deal with the rebels,” Hembrom said.

Fighting rebels, the NSS has been a witness to such killings before. It was in March 2007 that Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader and MP Sunil Mahto was brutally murdered by the Maoists. But Kisku’s death is sure to be a major blow to the outfit.

Sources believed that unless the administration begins a proactive operation in the Ghatshila sub-division, the region would turn into a terror zone.

A top NSS leader expressed his anguish over the police administration. Requesting anonymity, he said, NSS members were provided with bodyguards but the group was not allowed to fight Maoists.

“We had consulted the district police authorities to carry out anti-Naxalite operations in the area, but we never got permission. Except for Arun Oraon, the former superintendent of police (SP), no other SP has understood our problems. In fact, we are looked at with suspicion,” the NSS member said.

Without co-operation from the police department, the members of the anti-Naxalite outfit feel they are like sitting ducks. Sources in the NSS also believe that the police neither have any strategy to combat Naxalites nor any viable intelligence set-up in rebel-dominated regions.

But the police disagree. East Singhbhum SP Naveen Kumar Singh said he would not allow the NSS to operate freely. “After all the police administration is there. Outfits have to work under the framework of the Constitution,” he said.

Even after having lost its leaders, for NSS it is not a battle against the rebels alone, but also a fight to prove its authenticity.