Bhagalpur, Aug. 2: Around 60 armed cadres of CPI(Maoist) raided the bordering areas of Banka-Jamui districts on Monday evening and killed a police informer and his kin.

According to reports, the rebels reached Fulhara village under Belhar police station, around 60km from Banka district headquarters, and shot Lakho Yadav, a former member of the rebel outfit, and his nephew Manoj Yadav in a paddy field.

“The armed Maoists then lifted Lakho and Manoj and disappeared into the forests,” police quoted eyewitnesses as saying. Senior police officers, including superintendent of police (SP) of Banka, Shyam Kumar, and his counterpart in Jamui, R.N. Singh, visited the spot this morning.

The villagers also claimed that a large number of girls with arms were present in the rebel group.

Police sources told The Telegraph that the Belhar police station, located more than 25km from the spot, was informed about the incident around 7pm yesterday. The sources said the police could not reach the spot because “it was dark the area was inaccessible”.

The villagers spotted Lakho’s body lying in a pool of blood inside the forest. The rebels had slit his throat. They recovered Manoj, who had suffered several bullet injuries. They provided Manoj some first aid but he succumbed to his injuries, the sources said.

Some villagers, however, blamed the police for not reaching the spot in time. “Had the police reached in time, Manoj’s life could have been saved,” a villager said.

Sources said Lakho, a former rebel, left the outfit around three years ago. In 2010, the Maoists issued death warrant against Lakho, suspecting him to be a police informer, sources said. The sources admitted Lakho did help hte police in the arrest of Balgovind Yadav, a rebel leader.