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Chhattisgarh police on Sunday, February 4 nabbed as many as two hardcore Maoists in the insurgency-hit Kanker district of Chhattisgarh. The arrested Maoist cadres were carrying a collective bounty of Rs 10 lakhs on their heads, according to the district police.
According to the reports, the duo was arrested from Munjalgodi village under Kanker police station limits by a District Reserve Guard (DRG) team that was out on a counter-insurgency operation in the area on Sunday. Following the arrest, the duo admitted their association with the banned outfit.
The arrested Maoists have been identified as Vinod Awlam alias Ganga, team commander of the Nuapada protection unit of the North Bastar Division of the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist), and Aasu Korsa, deputy commander of the same unit. Both the arrested Maoists are residents of Gangloor police station of Bijapur.
Vinod joined the Maoist outfit as a member of the Chetana Natya Mandali (CNM), an offshoot of the banned CPI (Maoist) in 2011 and rose to the ranks of team commander under the North Bastar Division of the extremists in June 2022.
He was reported to be involved in various encounters with the security forces at a separate place and was also accused in the murder of a Nagar Sainik and an army Jawan in the year 2022 and 2023 respectively. He was also involved in planting a pressure-improvised Improvised Explosive Device (IED) near Bhainsgaon which led to the killing of a villager last year.
Vinod’s associate Aasu joined the Maoist outfit at the age of only 10 and spent his initial years as a CNM member of the Gangloor area. He was elevated as a member of the Gangloor Local Guerilla Squad (LOS) in 2016 and then subsequently shifted to the North Bastar Division in 2017. He spent around 7 years with the same unit before getting promoted to deputy commander in the protection team last year.
Korsa was also involved in all of the above-mentioned cases, along with other separate encounters with the security forces, during his association years with the banned outfit. The security forces have also recovered an 8 mm pistol from the possession of Korsa, along with a 12-bore country-made pistol and five rounds from Vinod. Notably, the Chhattisgarh government had already announced a reward of Rs5 lakhs each on both the arrested accused.
The arrests of the accused have occurred at a time when the security forces have been conducting frequent search operations in the Maoist-affected regions of the State. Earlier, in a similar operation launched in the remote regions of Narayanpur district, a joint team of security forces also neutralised as many as two cadres of the banned Maoist outfit after an exchange of fire on Saturday, February 3.
It is to be noted that in another operation launched in the Kandhamal district of neighbouring Odisha on Saturday, a divisional committee member of the outlawed Maoist outfit was also killed following a heavy exchange of fire between the forces and the Maoists in the Baliguda police station limits.
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