After laying siege over Lalgarh in West Midnapore district of West Bengal, Maoists have now targeted Orissa's Narayanpatna region.
Maoists on Thursday produced abducted ruling Biju Janata Dal MLA Jhina Hikaka before a people's court to decide his fate, a day after the Odisha government said it would withdraw cases against 13 prisoners in exchange for freedom of the tribal legislator.
Maoists have released abducted Biju Janata Dal Member of Legislative Assembly Jhina Hikaka on Thursday morning. The release comes after captivity of over a month. Media reports said that Hikaka was released at an undisclosed location into the custody of his wife, and Nihar Ranjan Patnaik, a lawyer.
Driven out of their homes by a Maoist-back outfit and ignored by the state government, several Dalits from Orissa's Koraput district on Tuesday demanded immediate rehabilitation or permission for self-immolation. Representatives of the group, who launched a sit-in and hunger strike in Bhubneswar, met Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. The chief minister was told that nearly 400 families of Narayanpatna and Bandhugaon areas have lost everything.
In a fierce gun battle with Maoists on Sunday, securitymen were believed to have inflicted some casualties in the rebel side in Orissa's Koraput district, police said.
At least six Maoists were killed in a fierce gun-battle with security forces in Orissa's Koraput district on Sunday, said the police. "On the basis of indications from the encounter site, at least six Maoists have been killed," said senior police officers engaged in the anti-Maoist operation in a forest in Podapadar area in Narayanpatna.Earlier reports indicated that at least 10 Maoists had been killed in the encounter.
The government's hurried action to give justice to the tribal population came in the wake of violence at Narayanpatna in Koraput district, official sources said. On June 15, angry tribals at Koraput forcibly ploughed about 500 acre land in possession of non-tribals. The tribal fury came to fore after the state administration failed to redress their grievances that the non-tribals had captured tribal land by using fraudulent means as well as by violating law of the land.
Documents seized by security forces in Maoist-hit Koraput district reveal that the rebels appear to have started training cadres to gun down helicopters used in ferrying security personnel for counter-insurgency operations.
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