Bhubaneswar, Sept. 3: Four Maoists, including a woman, surrendered before Malkangiri police today even as the rebels called a strike to protest against the killing of one of their leaders in an encounter last month.

Malkangiri superintendent of police Akhileshwar Singh identified the surrendered rebels as Pale Sodhi, Santosh alias Samara Khara, Bhagwan Hantal and Raju Golari. All of them were active in Malkangiri and its adjoining areas. Santosh and Raju were militia commanders.

The rebels apparently decided to lay down arms as they were fed up with violence and deviation of the Maoist leadership from its professed goal of working for the uplift of the downtrodden.

In another development, the strike called by the Maoists to protest against the killing of Madhav alias Gola Ramulu, one of their senior leaders who carried a reward of Rs 4 lakh on his head, failed to evoke much response in Malkangiri district. Sources said that though shops were closed and vehicles kept off the road in some of the interior areas, life was normal in most parts of the district.

“Shops were open in places such as Kalimela and Malkangiri,” he said, adding that there were no reports of disruption of traffic by the rebels.

The strike comes about a week after a Maoist-triggered blast that killed four BSF jawans in the neighbouring Koraput district. The jawans belonged to 161 BSF Battalion stationed at Kalimela in Malkangiri. This was seen as an act of revenge by the rebels, for whom the killing of Madhav was a big blow.

Madhav, a senior member of the Andhra-Odisha Border Malkangiri Divisional Committee, was gunned down by a joint team of special operations group and the police in a forest near Chhiliba at Machkund of Koraput district.

Meeting

A meeting of unified command under the chairmanship of the chief secretary was held in the secretariat today. It was decided that anti-Maoist operations will be intensified after the end of the rainy season.