Some of the arms the police seized from the encounter site on Wednesday. Picture by Samir Mondal

Duli, June 16: The night was still. Ratan Hembrum (name changed), whose family tills a small plot outside this small village, was sleeping on a cot in the courtyard. The sound of boots shook him up.

“I opened my eyes and saw a jawan with a rifle standing at the foot of the cot. I tried to get up, but he signalled me to stay put. I heard more boots. I realised the police had surrounded the village. It was a little before 4am,” the 25-year-old said.

A large number of cops left the village soon after. “They moved towards the forest to the north. In the light of dawn, I could see at least 500 of them. Then, about 20 minutes later, I heard the first shot. Soon, there was a glow over the jungle.” The police must have lit their search lights.

“All of us in the village stayed where we were till about 6.30am. Then, there seemed to be a lull in the firing and we ventured out. Some of us started walking north. But soon the police reappeared and told us not to go any further. Shots were being fired again…”

The firing stopped totally around 10am. “Half-an-hour later, we saw the police carrying bodies slung from bamboos,” Ratan said.

The villagers had apprehended a crackdown. “For four weeks or so, a Maoist group had been in and around Duli. They used to take rice and chicken and money from us.”

Duli is a small village about 25km from Lalgarh. It has some 35 tribal families comprising small farmers or day labourers. “We estimated from the provisions they took that there were 17 or 18 of them. There may have been more who were taking food from other nearby villages. On May 21, they held a feast in the village. They were celebrating the success of a landmine attack two days earlier in which five CRPF personnel, including a deputy commandant, were killed. That day, they took Rs 450 from us and sent one of us to buy 5kg of fish,” Ratan said.