Hyderabad: Maoists have revived their project to build rocket launchers, which is considered to be a gamechanger in guerrilla warfare, according to top sources in the anti-Naxal intelligence agencies.
Sources said the intelligence agencies believe that Maoists were working on improvising the rocket launchers as earlier attempts to put them to full use on security forces had failed.
After the arrest of ‘Tech’ Madhu and leaders like Sadhana Ramakrishna, Maoists had dropped the project for a while.
A top intelligence official of Telangana state said, “They have a central technical committee that is focusing on improvising rocket launchers. Their factory is now located in Dandakaranya.” The tech teams are working on communication systems, rocket launchers and tapanchas, he said.
“Now their cadres are dwindling. There is no new recruitment and the leadership is worried. Only Dandakarnaya special zonal committee is active,” he said.
In 2012, when police seized some rocket launchers, they found that there was a change in designs compared to those seized from Tech Madhu in 2005 and 2006 in undivided AP.
The old design was tested in the Nallamala forests and used to attack the police station in Durgi in Guntur district. The efficiency of those rockets was about 60 per cent. The Maoists had planned to improvise on them but that was stalled by the arrest of Tech Madhu in Chennai and other members of production units at Bhopal and Rourkela in 2006. The police had seized spare parts for 1,000 rockets. “Now they are not using any factories in cities like Kolkata which they used to earlier,” the officer said.
