Click to play videoLalgarh: West Bengal government on Thursday begun its operations to try and take back Maoist-controlled Lalgarh block of West Midnapore district.
Hundreds of policemen, paramilitary forces and Cobra forces have all been mobilised to beat back the Maoists and their armed tribal supporters.
In the first breakthrough, West Bengal Police entered the peripheries of Lalgarh on Thursday afternoon, aided by the central paramilitary forces.
After entering Lalgarh the police went berserk, mercilessly beating villagers accused of sheltering Maoists.
The breakthrough was achieved after five days of rampage by the Maoists and local resistance groups who targeted cadres and leaders of the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist, destroying their homes and party offices, digging trenches on roads and setting up barricades to cut off total access to security forces.
"After we get into the area, we will have to identify the Maoists. We will have to flush them out, we will have to arrest them and disarm them," said West Bengal Home Secretary Ardhendhu Sen.
Meanwhile bodies of four more local CPI-M leaders were recovered, taking the number of party workers killed in recent violence to 10.
But Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and his government is still undecided on how far they should take their crackdown as they are afraid of a political fallout if blood is shed in Lalgarh
They learn from every experience and they will definitely make use of the experience in Nandigram in planning the operation in such a manner that the use is force is kept to a minimum," added Sen.
For the time being the government has decided to press in elite commandos and helicopters to flush out the Maoists at a time when Buddhadeb has decided to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and cajole a clearly upset United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi to support their operations inside Lalgarh.
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