Bodies of poicemen lined up in front of the post mortem house in Chaibasa. A Telegraph picture

Jamshedpur, April 8: It was on November 27, 2001, that the Saranda forest area felt the first tremor of extremism.

This was a major breakthrough for the police as it gunned down a hardcore Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) leader, Ishwar Chandra Mahto at Bitkil Soya in Manoharpur.

But it was over a year later, on December 19, 2002, that the MCC announced itself on the state scene with a carnage that left the police reeling.

The area was the same — Bitkil Soya village bordering the Sundergar district of Orissa. A land mine explosion resulted in the deaths of a staggering 19 policemen.

On hindsight, it appears as if the police team was lured into the extremist lair.

Two days before, on December 17, the Naxalites killed a forester, Luthar Tirkey, of the Samtha range. The same night, they also finished off a pradhan of a village, located well beyond Bitkil Soya.

The twin deaths resulted in the deployment of a huge contingent of policemen. It was on their way back that the planted mine blew up on the men.

The bloodbath marked a watershed in the history of extremism in the Saranda forests. After that, the region has slowly, but steadily slipped into the extremist grip.

Spread over an area of 880 square kilometres, Saranda’s dense forest cover provides the ideal conditions for guerrilla warfare. The December 19 carnage triggered of a sense of fear in the mind of both policemen and forest officials.

In the intervening period, the MCC systematically destroyed almost all guest-houses in Saranda, which the policemen were using for a night-halt during the long-range patrolling. Several abductions and subsequent releases of foresters and forest officials ensured they (the forest officials) kept the police at an arm’s length.

Significantly, after Praveen Kumar took over as the SP, West Singhbhum district, the police had made minor dents in the extremist hold. Training camps at Saranda were destroyed. A huge consignment of police uniforms was also seized. But Wednesday’s attack, which claimed the lives of 27 policemen and injured as many, proves that the MCC is way ahead of the police in its terror gameplan.