Jawans during an earlier operation near Bhulagera village. Picture by Samir Mondal

Calcutta/Midnapore, Aug. 12: Paramilitary troopers will go deep into forests in search of Maoist guerrillas in their revised Lalgarh strategy.

The forces were only patrolling village roads and forest fringes since reaching the town, which had been out of bounds for the administration since last November. But the area-domination exercises proved ineffective with the rebels killing 19 people in the past month, sometimes after elaborate kangaroo court trials.

That operation Lalgarh could be entering a bloodier phase became clear today when a joint team of central and state units exchanged around 400 rounds in an eight-hour encounter with the rebels in the dense jungles around Bhulagera village, some 12km from Lalgarh town.

“The decision to attack Maoist hideouts was taken in a meeting at Writers’ Buildings last week. Instead of patrolling village roads, we have decided to hit our targets hiding in the jungles,” said a senior police officer.

The government admitted last week that phase two of operation Lalgarh had been a failure. Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said in Midnapore town yesterday that the joint forces would have to change their strategy to become more effective.

At least two officers of deputy superintendent rank who were part of the march to Lalgarh in June have been brought back from their postings in Malda and North 24-Parganas for the renewed offensive.

They have experience in tackling insurgents in forests, said an officer. “One of them has worked in West Midnapore while the other was part of operations against the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) in north Bengal,” the officer said.

Police sources said the forces were tracking the Maoists’ mobile phone calls to figure out their exact location in the jungles. “Since the local intelligence network has collapsed, we have to depend almost entirely on technical support,” said an officer.

It is not that the phones were not tracked earlier, but now the security forces have got the government’s go-ahead to smoke the rebels out.

“Now our aim is to proceed towards the hideouts,” said the officers.

Easier said than done. “Since the outfit has trained local youths who are fighting against us, it will be difficult to identify them. Our target will be to block roads that lead to the villages from jungles so that the guerrillas can’t return to the villages and melt into the crowd. Our aim will be to capture the enemy or kill them,” the officer said.

It is with the help of cellphone signals that the forces learnt about a group of Maoists in the jungle on the edge of Bhulagera village.

A group of 100 CRPF and state police jawans carrying assault rifles, light machine guns and mortars left for the place from Dharampur around five this morning.

The jungle starts after an open stretch of paddy field on the fringes of the village. The jawans were on the field when the firing started from the other end.

The guns on the other end fell silent around 2pm.

“We fired bullets and mor-tar shells and kept pushing them deeper into the forest,” West Midnapore superintendent of police Manoj Verma said.

The forces, however, did not pursue the enemy beyond a point. That could be part of the next phase.

“We are getting ready for it,” Verma said.