In the biggest ever setback to the outlawed Naxal organization, CPI Maoist, at least 13 of its cadres were killed by the police in dense forest area of Khammam district, bordering Chattisgarh. The Khammam district superintendent of police Devender Singh Chauhan said the incident occurred in Darelli forest under Pamedu police station limits, about 350 km east of Hyderabad in the wee hours of Monday. However no policeman was killed or injured in the incident. “Those killed have not been identified so far and the process is on,” he said. But it is believed that six squad commanders and some other top leaders are among those killed by the police. The SP said that the incident occurred when the Greyhound commandos were combing the area on a tip off that a large number of Naxalites had gathered in the area. It was significant that the incident occurred closed to the Dantewada and Bijapur district of Chattisgarh, the worst affected by the Naxalite violence in recent months. The police recovered three AK-47 rifles, four Sing loaded rifles and some other weapons and ammunition. This is firs time that Maoists died in such a large number in a single incident. Earlier 10 Maoists including the Nizamabad district committee secretary Venkata Swamy were killed in an encounter on March 7, 2005 and nine Maoists were killed in Kadapah district on April 28, 2006. Meanwhile a pro-Maoist poet and civil liberties activist Vara Vara Rao has described the Khammam incident a “fake encounter” and said that if it was a genuine exchange of fire the policemen should have suffered some losses. “It was a one-sided action and an attack on the base camp where a plenary meeting was on.” Vara Vara Rao said that this was a coordinated police attack in which the police officials of Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh and officials of Dantewada and Bijapur districts of Chattisgarh were involved. “They also used helicopters to carry out this operation,” he said. __
