Security forces extend search for Maoists

Lalgarh, West Bengal: A day after reclaiming the Lalgarh block headquarters in West Bengal from suspected Maoists and their sympathisers, security forces started combing the surrounding villages on Sunday to search for the rebels and leaders of a tribal group that have declared the zone 'liberated'.

Meanwhile, a group of visiting intellectuals has complained that women and children were being tortured by the security forces.

On the fourth day of the operation launched by the state government to flush out Maoists from this troubled zone in West Midnapore district, senior officials were holding a high-level meeting in Kolkata to take stock of the joint operation by central and state forces and to chart a roadmap for the future.

Security reinforcements comprising several companies of the Central Reserve Police Force and Border Security Force, as also state armed police, started off from the district headquarters in Midnapore for the Bhimpur camp, five kilometres from Lalgarh.

Small teams of the security forces have started scouring nearby villages for Maoist rebels, as also leaders of the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), the tribal body at the centre of a seven-month-long agitation in the region.

Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, who is also the Railways Minister in the central cabinet, has instructed two union ministers of state, Mukul Roy and Sisir Adhikari, to proced to Midnapore town and stay put there for the next few days, party sources said.

"We have visited some interior villages and spoken to the people. People are living in danger. They are very afraid that police may beat them up," claimed theatre personality Saonli Mitra.

She said some of the villages wore a deserted look, with children and women being beaten up. "We have been told that women are being molested, and water has been contaminated in some villages. People are living without food and water," she alleged.

Filmmaker Aparna Sen said: "We are seeing police everywhere. I have never seen so many police [personnel] in one area."

The intellectuals arrived on Saturday after top Maoist leader K. Koteshwar Rao alias Kishanjee appealed to them to come to Lalgarh and take the initiative to find a solution to the problems of the tribal people.