Acting on intelligence, DRG teams uncovered a full-scale ordnance unit that Maoists had nursed for months near the Koimenta-Erapalli axis. Security officials said the ordnance factory set-up was no makeshift shed but a camouflaged workshop under solar panels. Seventeen country-made rifles, each capable of sustained fire, which lay half-assembled beside barrel-grenade launchers to be used against security forces, were among the weapons seized.
The seizure also included steel rods, trigger mechanisms, lathe machines, drilling bits and welding kits which filled the cavernous hideout, while crates of gelatin sticks, detonators and circuit boards waited to become roadside bombs, police said.
“For the past 10 months, security forces have recovered 563 weapons including LMG, AK-47, ISAS rifles and SLR. This is a clear indication that Maoist firepower has diminished significantly and their movement has been crippled,” said Bastar’s inspector general of police P Sundarraj.
Sukma’s superintendent of police Kiran Chavan said the surrendered cadres had whispered the location weeks earlier, proof that fear now travels faster than ideology inside Maoist ranks.
As many as 249 Maoists have been killed in gunfights, among them the movement’s general secretary Nambala Keshav Rao, while top leaders including Abhay among others have surrendered. Officials at the site described the air thick with the smell of gun oil and fresh metal shavings. (With Agency Inputs)