Date:22/04/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/04/22/stories/2008042255360600.htm

Tamil Nadu

Search intensified in Kodaikanal hills

Staff Reporter

Pipe bombs, grenades seized

— PHOTO: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

FRUITFUL CATCH: Arms and ammunition seized from the Maoists in the forests, near Vadakaunji, near Kodaikanal.

KODAIKANAL: The search for the Maoists who escaped in Saturday’s encounter has been intensified on the upper and lower Kodaikanal hills.

Four Special Task Force teams are combing the forests between Vadakaunji and Pannaikadu. More than 10 small teams are collecting information about the movement of Maoists, according to S.S. Krishnamurthy, Deputy Inspector General of Police.

Talking to reporters here on Monday, he said a special STF team had seized seven pipe bombs, three grenades, 34 electronic detonators, 50 ordinary detonators, one assembled detonator, two coils of wire used for explosives and Rs. 12,500 in cash.

Clothes, cooking and tent materials and vessels worth Rs.15,000, left by them, were also seized.

Hospitals monitored

The team found bloodstains in bushes and rocks which, Mr. Krishnamurthy said, showed that some of the escaped Maoists had sustained shrapnel injuries.

All private hospitals on the hill and clinics at Palani and Batlagundu, Periakulam, Ayakudi and Chatrapatti, which are close to the Lower Palani and the Kodaikanal hills, are closely monitored. Surveillance has been stepped up on district borders, and security tightened at all checkpoints.

Intelligence

Meanwhile, intelligence gathering has also been intensified. Plainclothesmen have been interacting with residents of interior villages on the upper and lower Kodaikanal hills about the movement of strangers.

Q Branch Deputy Inspector-General Shankar Jiwal camped on the hill and monitored the operation and collection of information.

The Special Task Force, in association with Q Branch and the local police, killed Naveen alias Prasad (27), a trained Maoist and expert in operating weapons and the use of hand grenades, in an encounter in the forests near Vadakaunji, 40 km away from Kodaikanal, on Saturday. Eight suspected Maoists, including two women, had escaped.