Raipur: Maoists have strangulated a 20-year-old kindergarten worker in Chhattisgarh state on suspicion that she had worked for police.
Police told reporters on April 30 that the outlaws killed the woman in front of residents of Kohkodi village in insurgency-hit Kondagaon district.
The Maoists, known in India as Naxals, then hanged the woman’s body from a tree and threatened the villagers against disclosing the incident.
A senior police officer said the brutality with which the woman was killed shows that the ultras are frustrated because of the heavy loss of cadres in gun battles with the police in recent past.
The incident took place on April 23. However, it came to light only on April 29 when a police team visited the village, Kondagaon Superintendent of Police Abhishek Pallav told PTI.
The victim was identified as Parwati Korram alias Sarita, he said. According to preliminary information, a group of naxals had reached the village, located around 300 km south of Raipur, the state capital. The outlaws reportedly found the ringtone of Chhattisgarh police (stored) on the mobile phone of Korram, Pallav said.
“They also found a contact number of a woman ‘gopniya sainik’ (a secret trooper recruited as an auxiliary personnel) stored in Korram’s mobile phone, following which they dragged her outside her house,” the SP said. The naxals then thrashed the woman while accusing her of working at the behest of police and delivering messages of police to the Anganwadi children, he said.
The officer said the Maoists then strangulated Korram to death in front of the villagers gathered at the spot and hanged her body from a tree. Before leaving the spot, the ultras threatened villagers of dire consequences if they disclose the incident to anyone, the SP said.
He also said their investigation revealed that Korram had stored the secret trooper’s number because both had worked as kindergarten workers.
Later, the villagers performed last rites of Korram and buried her body. “We have sought permission of the Sub-Divisional Magistrate to exhume Korram’s body.”
The Maoists have suffered heavy losses in Chhattisgarh and neighboring Maharashtra, with at least 49 ultras, including senior cadres, getting killed in separate encounters with police
Ten naxals, including seven women, were killed in Sukma and Bijapur districts of Chhattisgarh on April 27 and 28. A week earlier, at least 39 Maoists were gunned down in the operations carried out by police in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district, bordering Bijapur.
(Source: news18.com)