Two senior Naxalites, carrying collective rewards of Rs 35 lakh, were killed in an encounter with security personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Mohla-Manpur-Ambagarh Chowki district on Wednesday, police said.
The encounter took place late in the afternoon in the forest of Banda Pahad hill under Madanwada police station area, when a team of District Reserve Guard (DRG) was out on an anti-Naxal operation, Superintendent of Police YP Singh said.
A team of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) was also involved in the operation as a support party, he said.
The operation was launched on Tuesday night based on inputs about the presence of senior cadres in the area, he said.
An exchange of fire broke out on Wednesday when security personnel were cordoning off the Banda Pahad area near Retegaon village amid rainfall, he said.
After the firing stopped, the bodies of two Naxalites were recovered from the spot. The deceased cadres have been identified as Vijay Reddy and Lokesh Salame, Singh said.
While Reddy, a member of Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of Maoists, carried a bounty of Rs 25 lakh, the government had announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh for the capture of Salame, a divisional committee member, he said.
Reddy also carried rewards in neighbouring states, including Maharashtra, and details concerning those are being collected, he said.
A search operation in the area is underway, he added.
Police sources said Reddy was an influential Maoist leader in the area, which shares a border with Gadchiroli in Maharashtra. He handled activities in the RKB (Rajnandgaon Kanker Border) division of the Maoist organisation, the sources said.
With the latest success, 229 Naxalites have been neutralised in separate encounters in Chhattisgarh so far this year. Of them, 208 were eliminated in the Bastar division, which includes the districts of Bijapur, Bastar, Kanker, Kondagaon, Narayanpur, Sukma, and Dantewada.
