Koraput: Maoists murdered a village postmaster, suspecting him to be a police informer, in Malkangiri district on Wednesday night.

The victim of Maoist violence, Narayan Palasi, was postmaster of Kamalapadar village in the district's Kalimela police limits.

According to sources, a group of around 10-15 armed Maoists swooped down on the home of Palasi around 10pm on Wednesday and dragged him out.

"The group of Maoists took Palasi near the village anganwadi centre and assaulted him before pumping in bullets from close range. The Maoists also slit the throat of Palasi with a sharp-edged weapon," said a source at Kalimela.

According to sources, a few months ago the Maoists had assaulted Palasi on charges of working as a police informer and had warned him of dire consequences.

After committing the crime and before leaving the place, the Maoists left a poster in which they claimed that Palasi had been punished for working as a police informer.

"Palasi was in contact with surrendered rebel Sukdev and used to pass information on them to the police," the Maoist poster stated.

"Any wrongdoer (read police informer) will be punished. There is no need for the villagers to get frightened at the development," it reads.

However, the police have dismissed the Maoists allegations as baseless and have denied that Palasi was an informer for the police.

"Never ever did we receive any information from Palasa for our anti-Maoist operations. We have our own intelligence network," said Malkangiri police chief Jagmohan Meena.

"The Maoists have murdered the postmaster for some other reason and that will be investigated."

He said that it had been the modus operandi of the Maoists to kill a person and then brand him as a police informer to gain sympathy.

The police suspect the crime to be the handiwork of the local operating squad of the Kalimela dalam and said efforts were on to identify the attackers.