One of the huts in which Raneeta was holed up

Makadchuha (Maharashtra), Aug. 24: She fired 10 shots as she stood camouflaged during the dawn-to-dusk encounter, each with pinpoint accuracy amid heavy rain.

Three bullets vanquished three troopers, two from the CRPF’s elite Cobra force, shot in the chest and neck. Two more wounded two policemen, including one who watched a bullet piercing his leg. The other five bullets were fired to create an impression that she was not alone in taking on the advancing anti-Maoist force armed with automatic rifles.

She was called Raneeta — a lone female fighter who resisted a posse of security personnel, taking a bullet in one thigh and having the other leg blown up by a grenade before succumbing to her injuries.

This is the picture that emerged from the ground after the lengthiest day-long anti-Maoist operation in Makadchuha, a hamlet in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, last Saturday. The version is based on the accounts of multiple sources who would not go on record because it was a security operation.

Makadchuha is 8km from Potegaon, a big village to the southeast of Gadchiroli town. With a primary health centre, a higher-secondary school and a big marketplace, Potegaon is a fortified base for district police and a company of the CRPF. One has to trek about 6km through dense forests and then cross two streams to reach Makadchuha.

Led by two DIG-level officers, the troopers had initially thought several Maoists were holed up inside the huts. But after the “final assault”, they discovered that Raneeta had left behind a lesson for them in death.

All of five feet tall, clad in dark olive-green fatigues and in her mid-thirties, she seemed to suggest that her battle had not been merely of arms, but of nerves. She still had 14 rounds on her, police said, but had run out of stamina after battling with an archaic muzzle-loading rifle.

“It was a case of mind over matter,” a police officer said. “She must have been so strong that she did not give up.” Nor did she heed their appeals to surrender or let out a wail after being wounded in both legs, according to the officer.

Born as Ramko Hichami in a south Gadchiroli village called Jhaveli, the Gond Adivasi girl was recruited into a Naxalite dalam 16 years ago, police records said. Since 2000, she has headed the Chatgaon dalam.

Married to Sunil, a member of the north Gadchiroli divisional committee of the CPI (Maoists), Raneeta had 26 FIRs against her, including 12 murders of civilians she suspected were police informers, 13 encounters and some cases of arson.

“It was unclear initially how many Naxalites were holed up in the hamlet,” said Sunil Ramanand, the deputy inspector-general of police (Gadchiroli range). “From our position, it was difficult to sight her since she was camouflaged in the corn fields, but she could see us.”

Although armed guerrillas have frequented Makadchuha, a five-hut settlement of 20 people in the forests some 40km from Gadchiroli town, its villagers said they had never been caught in such crossfire before.

Makadchuha had virtually become a theatre of war, they seemed to suggest, with more and more security personnel being deployed for anti-Maoist operations.

Ratna Mattami, a Gond tribal living in the village, said she had been sweeping her hut when she heard the gun shots. This was the first time “bloody violence had come to their doorsteps”, she said.

The settlement is surrounded by lush green paddy and corn fields that look different from traditional farms in Gadchiroli district. The fields are bigger and healthier. There is a pond to its west. Beyond the corn fields, there are dense forests.

For all its beauty, there is no electricity in Makadchuha and no school. A bore-well fitted with a hand-pump supplies drinking water. There are two brick-walled structures that Ratna said were recently built under the government’s Gharkul scheme.

Ratna’s is one of two Gond families that settled here five decades ago. They live in huts on the northern edge. There are three recent settlers, all converted Christians from the Oraon tribe. They have migrated from Raigarh in north Chhattisgarh.

The three Oraon families — belonging to the Lakra, Bek and Kuzur clans — have huts towards the southern tip. It was in one of these huts that Raneeta was holed up during the encounter. The police said three of six villagers detained later confessed to receiving arms training. The three others were let off.

Forgotten baby

While the encounter was going on, the police hurriedly evacuated the villagers and took them to a safer place. But in the melee, Ratna’s daughter-in-law Kusum forgot her new-born baby in its hammock. “She was crying and hungry when I came back to my hut, but she was safe,” Kusum said, sighing as she recounted the day-long ordeal.

When this reporter reached the village on Sunday, all the women and children were huddled in Ratna’s hut, some hoping their men who had been detained by the police would be freed soon. The children looked malnourished, the women frail and anaemic.

“What do we do?” asked old Nasu Mattami, the only man left in the village, breaking down. “If we don’t tend to them (Maoists) they will beat us, if we do, the police beat us.”

Hut-to-hut search

Saturday’s was the first encounter with the Maoists in which security forces cordoned off a settlement and carried out hut-to-hut intervention.

A joint team of Gadchiroli police and the CRPF had been out at dawn on the trail of two Maoist dalams, one led by Raneeta, reported to be in the vicinity. Two days earlier, the guerrillas had burned road-construction vehicles and equipment in the area.

The 70-member patrol party was approaching Makadchuha from its northern tip when they were suddenly fired on from corn fields close to the huts. The team, reinforced by Cobra commandos after the gunbattle broke out, were taken totally by surprise.

Police sources said it now appeared that the two dalams (together comprising 20 Maoists) had camped in the forests and that Raneeta had come to the village for a meeting.

“They must have just come to the village when our men also reached,” said deputy IG Ramanand. “They hold village meetings routinely to garner support.”

As the gunbattle raged, most of the dalam members fled into the jungles. Raneeta, wounded and unable to move, was left alone to defend herself as the commandos encircled the huts.