Maoists planning major attacks in Andhra Pradesh, say cops

Andhra Pradesh police said Monday that the Maoists were planning to resurface in the state in a big way by carrying out major sensational attacks.Two days after police recovered huge cache of arms and ammunition from a Maoist dump, Director General of Police R.R. Girish Kumar told media persons here that the guerrillas were planning major strikes and some “action teams” were moving to different places for the purpose.Alarmed over the seizure of spare parts sufficient to make 3,000 hand grenades and rocket launchers from a peaceful village in coastal Andhra, the police chief appealed to people to alert police about any movement of Maoists or their arms and ammunition caches.He displayed before media the huge stockpiles of arms and ammunitions recovered from a house in Paidiparru village near Tanuku mandal in West Godavari district Saturday.The material, in 26 gunny bags, included spare parts like springs, pins and tubes used for making hand grenades, tube launchers used to assemble rocket launchers, parts used for land mines and 26 rounds of 9mm pistol ammunition.The dump was recovered a day after the killing of a top Maoist, S. Kondal Reddy, by the police in Warangal district. Popular as “Tech Ramna” among Maoists, he was proficient in technical matters and had taken the house on rent for storing arms and ammunition.The police chief said if used, the material could have caused huge loss of life. “These are deadly weapons meant for liquidating the police and security personnel as well as the common man. Imagine what they could have done with this huge arms stockpile,” he said.Police claimed that Maoists were collecting the material for last two to three years from different places in preparation for major attacks.The police chief did not rule out the possibility of Maoists having similar caches in other places and appealed to people to be vigilant.The DGP said Maoists were trying to again make their presence felt following a series of setbacks they suffered in recent years. He said the number of Maoists in the state could be around 400.Kondal Reddy and Shakhamuri Appa Rao, two of the most wanted Maoists, were gunned down by police in two different shoot-outs in the state’s Warangal and Prakasam districts Friday.

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