Raipur: In a tactical move to address the problems arising out of its shrinking cadre strength in the wake of large scale surrender of Naxals in Chhattisgarh’s conflict zone of Bastar, CPI (Maoist) has revised its strategy by choosing blast attacks over guerrilla warfare to target security forces, intelligence sources said on Thursday.
“Maoists have upgraded their insurgency level by moving over to guerrilla warfare from blast attack nearly 5-6 years ago. They seem to have scaled down their insurgency level now by reverting back to the primary level of insurgency in which security forces are targeted with Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks”, a senior police officer disclosed to this newspaper on Thursday.
“The key reason behind Maoists deciding to withdraw from guerrilla warfare, albeit temporarily, was neutralization of red cadres to a significant level by security forces by engineering mass surrender of Naxals, particularly in the core areas of CPI (Maoist) in south Bastar districts of Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in the past eight months”, he indicated.
While 420 Naxals have surrendered, 522 rebels have been arrested in the past six months in south Bastar.
This change in strategy by Maoists was indicated from the growing cases of IED attacks in the conflict zone of Bastar in the recent times.
In last three months, 33 IED blasts were carried out by Maoists in Bastar in which 11 security personnel and 23 local tribals were killed.
According to the police officer, security forces have of late succeeded in making inroads into the core of CPI (Maoist) in south Bastar putting pressure on the rebels.
“In March this year, 12 big operations against Naxals were carried out in their core area”, he added.
In last three months, 117 encounters between security forces and guerrillas took places in Bastar in which 56 Naxals and 11 cops were killed.
