Midnapore, April 30: In the past 11 days, the Maoists have struck at an unlikely target: the Peoples’ Committee Against Police Atrocities, widely considered a frontal organisation for the rebels.

Since April 19, they have gunned down five People’s Committee members well known in their areas of operation and injured another. The reason: they were suspected to be police informers.

The number of arrests as well as successful police raids on rebel dens has gone up “dramatically” in recent months and sources close to the Maoists say this could not have been possible without “inside information”.

They added that according to information gathered by the Maoists, all five victims had been passing on information about them to the police.

The police confirmed recent successes in strikes against the Maoists and admitted that the villagers were “co-operating”, but refused to comment on the Maoists’ charges against the five killed.

West Midnapore police chief Manoj Verma said: “There is no doubt that we have been getting much more co-operation from the villagers in recent months and also specific information about Maoist activities. But the information we have is that the People’s Committee activists were killed over distribution of spoils collected through extortion.”

Police sources said they would never publicly admit receiving information about the Maoists from members of the People’s Committee. However, they said the recent successes would never have been possible without information from those who knew about the activities of the Maoists.

In April, officers said, the police conducted four successful raids and seized considerable quantities of arms and ammunition. The raids on Mathurapur in Salboni, Sirsi and Brindapur in Jhargram, and Bhalukbasha in Goaltore yielded 25 guns, over 10kg of explosives, a dozen improvised explosive devices and over 300 cartridges.

“For each of these raids, the information we had was specific,” an officer said. “Earlier, we had many wild goose chases, but not now.”

Police sources said such precise information could only have come from those close to the Maoists.

In the past three months, over 300 suspected rebels have been held. The figure for the eight months from June last year to January this year is around 400.

The sources close to the Maoists said the guerrillas first started suspecting the five victims after their interest in the activities of the committee started ebbing.

This is something the families of the slain committee activists have confirmed. Mangala Mahato, the wife of Ranjit Mahato, who was killed on Wednesday, said: “My husband used to be a very active committee worker. But for some reason, in the past two months, he had stopped going to its meetings.”

Even Dulali, the wife of injured Mihir Singh, said the same about her husband. Mihir, who had been left for dead by the Maoists, survived with a bullet in his spine.