The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has been conducting a major naxal operation named “Octopus” at the heavily mined “Burha Pahar” hilly range in Garhwa district, bordering Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, officials said on Wednesday.
The operation has been continuing since September 4 and the force claimed major successes in establishing control in “Burha Pahar”, an area known as a Naxal corridor. A senior CRPF officer told ANI that the “operation ‘Octopus’ was a big success as the force first managed to root out Naxal dominance from the area. “The operation has been going on since September 4 and we have seized a lot of arms and ammunition so far. We intend to stay there. We will open a camp there,” said the officer.
According to the officer, the ‘Burha Pahar’ hilly range lies in Jharkhand’s Garhwa district, bordering Chhattisgarh. “The hilly, forested terrain was used as a corridor by the Naxals till now. Earlier attempts were also made by security forces, but success was not achieved. In 2018, five security force jawans lost their lives in a major operation,” said the officer.
The officer said Saurabh alias Markus, Naveen, and Santu were active naxalites, all carrying rewards of between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 20 lakh on information about them in the region. CRPF’s CoBRA unit, its GD Battalion, and state police forces like Jharkhand Jaguar are engaged in the operation in which “one Chinese Cylinder type grenade, 35 Chinese grenades, and three Chinese cone grenades, along with huge arms and ammunition, were seized so far.
Other seized items included two cylinder bombs (ten kg each), 11 bombs weighing 3 kg, two bombs weighing 7 kg, one six kg bomb, 15 Tiffin bombs, one pressure cooker bomb, 25 iron arrow bombs, two kg ammonium nitrate, two kg uria, two pipes for making projectile launchers or barrel grenade launchers, among many such materials, as well as some paints and other items in the operation.