Bhubaneswar, May 23: Maoists shot dead the husband of a sarpanch in Rayagada district in the early hours today.

The latest killing follows Maoist chief Sabyasachi Panda’s warning of retaliatory violence by the rebels if the government continued its operation against them.

Sources said about 25 armed rebels, including some women, stormed into the house of the sarpanch, Lahari Bagaranga, at Hanumantpur village in Chandrapur area of Rayagada district.

The extremists asked her husband Deba Bagaranga, 40, to accompany them and then shot him dead on the village boundary.

Senior police officials said some posters and banners left behind by the killers of Deba, who was an active social worker, portrayed him as a police informer. The hand of the Maoist group led by Nikhil, a former lieutenant of Panda, is suspected to be behind the murder.

Sources said the Maoist group that killed Deba also stormed another village in the Chandrapur area and attacked a contractor. While the details of this incident were being collected, combing operations had been intensified in the area. Police officials said the latest killing would also lead to the intensification of Operation Sabyasachi as the rebel chief, who had the government at his mercy two months ago when he abducted two Italian nationals, had thrown a challenge to the security forces with his warning of violence two days ago.

“Any violence by the Maoists at this juncture when the security forces are hot on their trail should be seen as a sign of desperation. As far as Sabyasachi is concerned, he knows that he has almost been cornered. The pressure on him is bound to mount further now,” said an officer.

The area of operation of Panda, who has accused the state government of going back on its promises and doing nothing for the release of his colleague, Arati Majhi, is shrinking progressively. Sources said security forces had also stepped up combing operation in most other Maoist-affected districts including Kandhamal, Koraput and Malkangiri in a bid to flush out the rebels. They tasted success in Kandhamal yesterday when a woman cadre who worked for the Ghumsar division of the rebels was arrested from a village.

Meeta, the arrested extremist, had been attached to the CPI (Maoist) Ghumsar division comprising parts of Ganjam and Kandhamal districts for the past three years.

“We expect more arrests in the coming days,” said an officer. The top Maoist leader a few days ago had accused the state government of going back on its word and threatened to retaliate if the targeted operation against him was not halted immediately.

In an audio tape released to the media, Panda had said the government had mounted Operation Sabyasachi even though his group had kept its promise of refraining from violence.

Referring to the government’s promise not to target the rebels as long as they refrained from violence in the wake of the hostage crisis, Panda had said that operations against him had been intensified though the Maoists led by him had done nothing to provoke the security forces engaged in special operations in western and southern Odisha.

Reacting to the Maoist leader’s tirade, Odisha home secretary U.N. Behera had said that steps were being taken for the release of Maoists and their sympathisers as agreed while negotiating the release of hostages a few months ago.

On the other hand, the two Maoist-chosen interlocutors who negotiated the release of the Italian nationals kidnapped by Panda had in a letter criticised the government for mounting operations against the rebels without provocation.