Government troops faced no resistance Saturday as they entered a remote area of eastern India which had been overrun by Maoist rebels, police said. A large band of armed rebels had moved into the Lalgarh region, a heavily forested part of West Bengal state, earlier this week, driving out poorly armed local police and seizing control of villages in a 20 square mile (52 square kilometer) area. The rebels are believed to have killed at least five people, all workers of the Communist of Party of India (Marxist) that rules West Bengal, according to police. The state government had vowed to retake the region, just 90 miles (155 kilometers) southwest of Calcutta, the state capital, but said it would attempt to minimize bloodshed. Praveen Kumar, the area's director general of police, said hundreds of troops entered the region Saturday without resistance. Reinforcements were expected later in the day, and the troops would fan out across the rest of the region to push out the rebels, he said. Government forces had earlier been unable to reach the rebel-held areas because villagers who welcomed the Maoists had blocked the roads, police said. Local residents, most of them from impoverished indigenous tribes, accuse communist party workers of extorting money and harassing them in collusion with police. “The confidence of the public has to be restored in the rule of law,” Kumar told reporters. The rebels, who say they are inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have been fighting for more than three decades in several Indian states, demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor. They frequently target police and government workers. They are called Naxalites after Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal where the movement was born in 1967.
