Bhubaneswar, Dec. 14: Maoists today shot dead three persons, including a contractor and a village panchayat member, in Malkangiri district, about 500km from here.
The contractor, Gobind Saha, was killed at MV-90 village in Malkangiri district’s Kalimela police station area, while the bullet-ridden bodies of Tulasi Behera, ward member of Chintalguda, and Jaga Madkami of Ramaguda were found in a forest near Bejangwada this morning.
Malkangiri superintendent of police Akhileswar Singh said Saha was engaged in the construction of a police building. Security forces launched intensive combing operations in Kalimela and Bejangwada following the killings. During combing, the BSF jawans and the police allegedly came across a group of Maoists at Tekguda and engaged with them in a gun battle. However, there were no reports of casualties till the last reports came in this evening.
“The area is still being searched, but the Maoists might have fled,” said Singh.
Tulasi and Jaga were among the seven persons, most of them tribals, who had been kidnapped by some armed rebels from Chintalguda and Bejangwada villages on Thursday. While three of them were released yesterday, two others were set free today.
However, the Maoists showed no mercy towards the two deceased as they suspected them to be police informers. Sources said they had cautioned Tulsi, the ward member of Chintalguda, against co-operating with the BSF in the past. The latest killings come in the wake of the gunning down of the father of a panchayat samiti member at Motu in Malkangiri. A group of armed rebels had barged into the house of Prabhakar Madkami, the father of a Manyamkonda panchayat member, late on Thursday night and shot him dead. His bullet-riddled body was found on the village outskirts the next day.
Hours later, another group of Maoists set a private bus on fire near Beheraguda in Bejangwada. However, no one was injured or killed in the incident. This was the second incident of a bus being torched by the radicals in the district.
On December 4, Maoists had kidnapped three persons, including the son of a village sarpanch of Gamphakunda. One of them escaped from their clutches the next day while the other two were released on December 7.
The sudden escalation of Maoist violence there is being seen as an attempt by the rebels to retain their loosening grip on the district which shares borders with Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, both with a long history of Left-wing extremism.
