Patna, Feb. 12: Abducting a senior government official to free their imprisoned leaders is a better bet for Maoists than plotting a largescale operation like the Jehanabad jailbreak.
Intelligence reports suggest, the Red rebels are contemplating to abduct senior government officials and bureaucrats in their attempt to free their top-ranked leaders from jails. About 300 Naxalite leaders are lodged across 55 jails in the state.
“It is easier to abduct a government official than carry out an operation like the Jehanabad jailbreak in the present scenario,” an intelligence official quoted a senior Maoist leader as saying at a recently-concluded meeting of senior Naxalite leaders in Lotaba forests of Dumaria-Imamganj region in Naxalite-affected Gaya district.
Intelligence reports suggest the Maoists changed their strategy after the Kajra operation at Lakhisarai in August last year. Sources in the intelligence said over 100 senior Maoist leaders from Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh attended the meeting, which was presided over by a central committee member of the banned outfit Sanjeevji alias Vijay Yadav.
In the meeting, a decision was taken to constitute a committee to chalk out a strategy for foolproof operation to be executed by members of Peoples’ Liberation Guerrilla Army. Intelligence sources said the meeting expressed concerns over the arrest of a large number of senior leaders in Bihar and Jharkhand in the past few of years.
The arrest of senior leaders like Promod Mishra, Ajay Kanu (both central committee members) and zonal commanders like Vikas Yadav alias Badal and Chandanji has come as a jolt to the outfit. Intelligence officials said about 3,000 hardcore members and sympathisers of the CPI (Maoist) have been arrested in Bihar and Jharkhand in the past five years.
A senior home department official said security around jails where Maoists are lodged has been beefed up and armed security personnel have been deployed. “We are alert and have cautioned the prison department officials against their designs,” he said.
