india

Updated: Sep 04, 2019 15:56 IST

Police in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district have claimed that CPI (Maoist) foot soldiers are going to Telangana to work in stone quarries from where they bring detonators and explosives for the left wing extremists when they return.

Police claimed that the interrogation of four persons who were arrested on Monday evening with 50 detonators, revealed that the Maoists have adopted this modus operandi for the past one year. The detonators are used to trigger improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

“The new modus operandi was discovered after the arrest of these four accused. Maoist militias are going to Telangana to work in stone crushers and buy detonators and give them to Maoist commanders in Dantewada area,” said Dantewada’s superintendent of police (SP) Abhishek Pallava.

The SP further said that the interrogation is still on are police trying to arrest another person who had delivered 50 detonators in February this year.

“This is now common and successful modus operandi for smuggling small quantities of explosives and detonators,” said the SP.

According to Chhattisgarh police records, more than 300 IEDs are detected every year in the Maoist stronghold of Bastar and on an average about 70 IED blasts take place every year.

“In last nine years from 2010 to 2019, 153 police personnel and 53 civilian were killed in IED blasts in Bastar region. A total of 493 blasts took place in Bastar. The IEDs are the latest weapons of Maoists through which they are damaging the security forces,” said Sunderraj P, deputy inspector general of police (DIG), anti-Naxal operations.

An assembly bypoll is scheduled in Dantewada on September 23. There are 1,88,263 voters in the constituency out of which 89,747 are male voters and 98,876 are female voters. There are 273 polling centres in the constituency.

In 2018, assembly election, Bheema Mandavi of the BJP defeated Congress leader Devati Karma by a narrow margin.

On April 9, two days before the parliamentary elections in Bastar, Bhima Mandavi, and four other accompanying him were killed when Maoists blew up his convoy with IEDs.