Infiltration of CPI Maoists from Bihar in Palamu’s Pathra has been severely curtailed with the setting up of a police outpost at Pathra in Sarsout panchayat of Harihurganj police station.
Pathra connects Bihar’s Doomarya which is barely 2 Kms away and as such this was the easiest passage of the Maoists to come in and go out said DSP Chhaterpur Shambhu K Singh who further said this Pathra police out post is a bigthorn in the flesh of the Maoists as their free run here is too crippled.
Sources said this blocking or interception of Maoists’ passage was envisaged by DGP Jharkhand D K Pandey whose association with Palamu is too old as when he was the Commandant of the elite ITBP (Indo Tibetan Border Police) the extremism here in Palamu was at its peak and he and his ITBP was here for the conduct of a midterm poll in the united Palamu then since Latehar was not carved out of Palamu.
Sources said the setting up of police out post at Pathra was the brain child of DGP Pandey. For some weeks Palamu police went here with a police picket and later on this picket was upgraded into a police outpost.
Sources said chief secretary Rajbala Verma and DGP D K Pandey decided to use these out posts of police across the state as IDC (integrated development centre) and Pathra police outpost is also an IDC.
DSP Shambhu K Singh said, “It is not only the cops who will sit here. There will come senior and down the line civil officials took to mitigate the sufferings of the people. Block and Circle officials will be here most frequently now.” On the strategic importance of this Pathra outpost Singh said, “Its proximity to Bihar is its great strategic value. Doomarya is considered to be a hotbed of Maoists in Bihar and this Pathra is in its contiguity.” The DSP further said, “For people of Pathra the nearest police station is Harihurganj which is 18 Kms away from Pathra and quite understandably people refrained from coming over to Harihurganj police station for its too great a distance and allowed themselves to suffer injustice silently’
Here DSP added the Maoists began to play their card. The Maoists used to hold sittings here, dispense justice in the crudest of form in land dispute cases and where the Maoists found the two warring sides of people are not toeing their line they came forward and usurped the disputed land.
“Nobody has any idea as to how much landed property is owned by the Maoists,” added DSP Singh who said “This passage has seen the foot fall of notorious Maoists like Kalka, Abheejeet , Sandeep and their likes.” A total of 14 illegal stone crushing plants have been demolished here jointly by police and mining officials which is itself an indicator as to how in remote areas Maoists have their fiscal pipe lines laid added DSP.