Two Maoists killed in exchange of fire on Telangana-Chhattisgarh border

Two Maoists were reportedly killed in an exchange of fire between the police and Maoists in Cherla mandal in the district on Sunday.

Kothagudem: Two Maoists were killed in an exchange of fire between the police and Maoists in the Puttapadu forests on the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border under the Kistaram police station limits in Chhattisgarh on Sunday.

The Kothagudem police, in a statement issued here, said a police team carried out a combing operation following a tip off about the movement of a CPI (Maoist) action team aiming to attack the police.

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Around 6.10 am, the naxals fired at police from a higher ground and the police retaliated. The police team searched the area after the exchange of fire that lasted for a few minutes and found two bodies. One of them was identified as Cherla LOS commander Madakam Yerraiah alias Rajesh while the other one was yet to be identified.

One SLR, one single bore gun, explosive material and others were recovered from the spot. The bodies were shifted to the Bhadrachalam Area Hospital for postmortem, the statement said.

Meanwhile, in a statement released to the media later in the day, Maoist BK-ASR division committee secretary Azad alleged that the Puttapadu encounter was a fake one. The police had caught Rajesh who went to Puttapadu unarmed on party work, tortured him and killed him, he alleged.

To make the encounter look real, the police had left weapons with the bodies. A resident of Puttapadu, Nandal was also killed along with Rajesh, he said.

Rajesh had joined the Maoists when he was 19 years old, served as Cherla LOS member from 2016-22 and was promoted as Cherla LOS commander in October 2022, Azad added.