RANCHI: In a significant achievement, the security forces have recovered a huge cache of explosives during a joint search operation being done on the borders of Toklo police station of West Singhbhum and Kuchai police station of Saraikela-Kharsawan districts of Jharkhand on Sunday evening.
According to police, the search operation was being conducted on the basis of a tip-off received by the police department that huge cache of ammunitions has been hidden in the jungles to target the security forces.
According to the police, a joint team of Jharkhand Police, Jharkhand Jaguar and 60th Battalion of CRPF was formed and a search operation was launched in the region.
“The team recovered 14 IEDs from the forested hilly area, each of them weighing nearly 2 kgs. Apart from this, handmade grenades, ammonium nitrate powder, firecracker powder and steel containers have also been recovered,” stated an official communique from the state police headquarters.
All the IEDs were diffused and explosives were destroyed on the spot by the bomb disposal squad due to security reasons, it said.
Notably, Maoists are now restricted only to Saranda jungles in Jharkhand as they have been whipped out from other pockets of the state.
According to an estimate, around 85 - 90 Maoists are supposed to be hiding in Saranda jungles, where they have planted thousands of IEDs, which has become a challenge for the security forces.
Despite the fact that Maoists have planted IEDs in the entire area, forces are advancing slowly into the jungles with full determination and have established several temporary security camps in their core areas.
The state police have launched a joint operation in Kolhan jungles in November 2022 after a tip-off that some of the senior Maoist leaders, including Misir Besra and Patiram Majhi alias Anal Da, are hiding in that forest stretch, which is said to be strategically important.