BHUBANESWAR: Dealing a serious blow to the Left Wing Extremists’ firepower, the Border Security Force (BSF) on Thursday seized a huge cache of gelatin sticks as well as explosive materials from a forest under Kalimela police limits of Malkangiri district.
Following intelligence inputs, a special operation team of the 91st Battalion of the BSF searched Rajulkonda reserve forest during the morning hours and found about 1,000 gelatin sticks buried in a hideout of the Maoists. Over two and half kg of loose explosives and one dynamo exploder, used to trigger the blasts, were also unearthed from the site, DIG (Intelligence) of BSF JC Nayak informed.
The explosive materials weighed over one quintal and their recovery will severely dent the IED-making capacity of the CPI (Maoist) in the region. The team was led by by Commandant Ghanshyam Das.
The recovery of the materials used for making IEDs comes close on the heels of security forces running down a gun manufacturing unit in Kalimela area earlier last month. A joint squad of Special Operation Group and District Voluntary Force had, on September 17, found arms, ammunition, explosives and raw materials and a lathe unit in Dulagunda.
The operations by the BSF, which has been playing a key role in anti-Maoist operations in the Naxal hotbed of the State, have also helped mount pressure on the local militia to quit their activities and surrender in the recent months.
Meanwhile, the Malkangiri Zilla Adivasi Sangh launched a poster campaign at various places of Kalimela, Mathili, Podia, Korukonda and Balimela appealing to the tribal community to thwart the activities of CPI (Maoist). The tribal body has urged its community members not to cooperate with the Maoists as the former are being exploited in the name of Left Wing ideologies.
Several posters which appeared in the region have come after security forces made headway into the Maoist bastion. In recent months, several cadres of CPI (Maoist) have been neutralised while surrenders by the militia have risen.