BHOPAL: Four armed Maoist cadres – all women – were gunned down in a fierce gun battle with the Madhya Pradesh police in the jungles of Maoist-affected Balaghat district of the central Indian state on Wednesday.The gun battle happened near the Raunda Forest Camp in the dense Supkhar forest located under the Garhi police station area, which is close to the eastern end of the Kanha National Park on the MP-Chhattisgarh border.Acting on specific intelligence inputs, the state police’s elite anti-Maoist force – the Hawk Force – and supporting police teams engaged a group of armed Maoist cadres in an aggressive gun battle, resulting first in the elimination of three women Maoists.As the anti-Maoist force personnel moved into the dense forests further towards the Chhattisgarh border, another Maoist cadre was found dead.“In total, four armed Maoist cadres have been eliminated by our force. All the four slain Maoist cadres were women. Four weapons, including an INSAS rifle, an SLR, a 303 rifle and a 315 bore rifle have been recovered from the forests and combing operations are still underway from MP as well as Chhattisgarh side,” MP police’s ADG (anti-naxal operations) Pankaj Srivastava told TNIE.This is the biggest success so far for the anti-Maoist security establishment in MP, where three districts – Balaghat, Mandla and Dindori – are Maoist affected.“Before it, the three armed Maoist cadres were killed in an encounter with police in Balaghat in 2022. With the area where the encounter took place being in the dense and rugged forests, more details about the slain Maoist cadres, including their identity and rewards they carry, are awaited,” Srivastava said.
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