Gadchiroli Naxal encounters: Toll mounts to 39

The toll in the much-discussed anti-naxal operations in Gadchiroli district of eastern Maharashtra mounted to 39 on Wednesday, even as the security agencies attributed a major share of the success of the twin encounters to the information provided by a “deep throat” about the “secret gathering” of a sizeable number of Maoists at one place on Sunday.

On a day when the C-60 commandos of the Gadchiroli police recovered two more bodies from the Indravati river taking the toll in the twin encounters to 39, informed sources in the Maharashtra police said that the C-60 commandos of the Gadchiroli police and personnel from battalion 9 of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) pulled off in the biggest-ever anti-naxal operation in the country because of the “valuable inputs” provided by an “unimpeachable” source.

“Based on the most credible information that the intelligence agencies had landed from a ‘deep throat’, we had received a go-ahead for the anti-naxal operation from the top police brass in the State. The ‘deep throat’ is part of  the ‘deep assets’ that the State Intelligence Department has created in the naxal-infested areas of Gadchiroli district,” a senior police officer involved in the anti-naxal operation undertaken on Sunday and Monday said.       

The sources said the twin encounters, which saw security agencies decimate three major Maoist dhalams operating in the naxal-infested talukas of Aheri and Sironcha in Gadchiroli district, were monitored by directly Maharashtra’s Director General of Police Satish Mathur with the assistance of Additional DGP level officers — Bipin Bihari (Law & Order) and D Kanakratnam (Operations).

The major crackdown on the Maoists has come as a major jolt to the naxal movement in Gadchiroli district bordering Chattisgarh.