Left extremist leader Kishenji killed in West Bengal in a counter insurgency operation

Kolkata, Nov 24 (PTI) In a body blow to the left extremist Maoists, the joint police and counter insurgency forces killed top Maoist leader Mollajulla Koteswar Rao alias Kishenji in a fierce gunbattle in a forest in the West Midnapore district of the eastern Indian state of West Bengal Thursday. The body of 58-year-old Kishenji, a Maoist politburo member and ranking third in its hierarchy leading armed operations in junglemahal forest area of the state since 2009, was found after the encounter and identified, a top counter-insurgency force official said. "Kishenji has been killed and his body identified along with his AK-47 rifle," the official told PTI here. The joint forces, acting on specific information that Kishenji was present started cordoning off the area, after the Maoist leader had escaped for a second time since March last year from the Kushaboni forest nearby the previous day, the official said. 1,000 personnel of the joint forces of Central Reserve Police, Border Secuirty Force and counter insurgency CoBRA force, launched an offensive and broke through the four-tier security of Maoists comprising 'village defence squads' after a firefight at Burisole jungle, he said. He said the joint forces were looking for Suchitra Mahato, a Maoist woman leader with whom Kishenji lived and was accompanying him, and others who fled after the encounter. The joint forces recovered letters written by Kishenji and Suchitra Mahato, besides a laptop bag and some documents after raiding the house of a person named Dharmendra Mahato at Gosaibandh village. "Kishenji's plan was to move to Malabal jungle in (the neighbouring state of) Jharkhand, but we were successful in sealing all escape routes. We could confine him to the Burisole forest," the official said. In New Delhi, India's Home Secretary R K Singh told reporters that "most likely it is Kishenji. The officers on the spot said that it is Kishenji and most likely, 99 per cent it is Kishenji." Singh said the Home Ministry sent the latest photographs of the Maoist leader for comparison and final confirmation. West Bengal state government sounded a statewide alert after receiving a directive from the Central Home ministry, Director General of Police Naparajit Mukherjee said here. This was the first major offensive against the Maoists in the state after the Trinamool Congress government of Mamata Banerjee assumed power in the state six months back. Manoj Verma, the former Superintendent of Police of West Midnapore during the Left Front rule, who was sent on compulsory wait when the new government took over, was recently recalled to intensify the operations against the Maoists after Mamata Banerjee took a hard stand against the ultras. Maoists are active in some of the interior inaccessible areas of the Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa in the east, Chattisgarh in the centre and Andhra Pradesh in the south. PTI