Two Maoists were killed in an “exchange of fire” with the police in Puttapadu forest area along the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border village of Yerrampadu in Charla mandal on Sunday morning.
The incident took place at around 6.10 a.m. when a joint team of the Telangana’s Greyhounds police and the district special party police personnel was out on a combing operation in Puttapadu forest, straddling the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border, under Chhattisgarh’s Kistaram police station limits, police said.
The Maoists “opened fire” on the combing police party which returned the fire, triggering the “encounter”, police added.
Police found two bodies of Maoists during a search operation at the “encounter” site after the cessation of gunfire. One of the deceased Maoists was identified as the banned outfit’s Charla Local Organising Squad (LOS) commander Madakam Yerraiah alias Rajesh.
A self-loading rifle and another firearm were recovered from the spot.
Police intensified combing operations in the jungles along the restive inter-State border following the incident.
The bodies of the two deceased Maoists were shifted from the “encounter site” to the mortuary at the Government Area Hospital in Bhadrachalam for autopsy.
Meanwhile, in a statement purportedly issued by the CPI (Maoist) Bhadradri-Kothagudem Alluri Sitarama Raju (BK-ASR) division committee, its secretary Azad alleged that the Charla LOS commander Rajesh, 26, a native of Kangal in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district, and another Adivasi youth of Puttapadu village, were killed in a “fake encounter” at Puttapadu.
