Guns roared at them when a large group of Greyhound jawans of Andhra Pradesh were returning to Chitrakonda town in the Naxalite-infested Malkangiri district of Orissa on 29 June morning after carrying out a combing operation in the region. The ill-fated boat was carrying 66 persons, comprising mostly of the Greyhound personnel apart from two Constables of Orissa police and three local boatmen. While many of the jawans were sitting atop the motor launch, a number of them were sitting inside the cabin. The Maoists fired at the launch from the top of a forested hill catching the jawans unaware when the vessel was crossing a narrow passage in the Balimela reservoir. The jawans returned fire without delay, but by then the launch had started sinking in the deep water. Many of the jawans sitting on the launch roof sustained bullet injuries, but several of them were lucky to find themselves floating in the water as the boat sunk with many of their colleagues trapped inside the vessel.

It took more than seven days for the Indian Navy personnel, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa police and the Central paramilitary forces to trace the boat 40 meters below the water, retrieve it and recover the bodies of the Greyhound jawans. At least 28 persons of those who managed to jump out from the sinking boat were rescued after they swam up to the shore. A few of those who managed to reach the shore were also killed by the extremists.

The incident, in which over 30 persons were killed, came as a rude shock for both Andhra Pradesh and Orissa governments. They could not digest the fact that the Maoist strike in the reservoir was just waiting to happen.

The Maoists, who have been operating in the cut-off area of Malkangiri for more than a decade, had all along been waiting to take on the Greyhound force of Andhra Pradesh whenever they get a chance. It was suspected that the extremists had been able to acquire intelligence information about the movement of the Greyhound force team in the reservoir that day, and taken position on the hill near Alampekka hamlet to attack the boat as per their plans. On the fateful day, the security forces just fell into the trap of the Maoists.

The cut-off area of Malkangiri bordering Chhattisgarh was created in the early 1960s in the wake of construction of the Balimela hydroelectric project. It can be approached from Chitrakonda town through boats and has over 20,000 people, mostly tribals, living in as many as 151 hamlets. The area is surrounded by water and hills. That the cut-off area was a fortress of left-wing extremists is well-known to both Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. Absence of road communication and little presence of government machinery had made it easy for the Maoists operating in both the states run their network from there with ease. That the hamlets inside the cut-off area and villages alongside the reservoir were safe havens for the Maoists is also clear from the government records. According to official data, a total of 278 incidents of Naxalite violence occurred in Orissa between 1990 and 2006. As many as 119 of these incidents occurred in Malkangiri district alone.

In the recent years, the state government has made a claim of adopting a two-pronged approach to contain the Maoist menace in the state. But Malkangiri, which is worst-hit by Maoist violence, has not been given priority till date. The first police station in the cut-off area was established just a few months ago, rendering it as a difficult area to carry out combing operations. The district also has a very poor road communication system. Moreover, those who have visited the cut-off area contend that people living in the region have very little idea of the welfare schemes of the government.

Given the series of Naxal attacks in and around the cut-off area, the 29 June Maoist strike on the boat carrying Greyhound jawans should serve as an eye-opener for the Orissa government to focus on development work in the region. Only deployment of more and more jawans trained for anti-Naxal operations alone would not serve any purpose. The police may succeed in killing a few more Maoists during the combing operations, but there is every possibility of the cut-off area as well as the backward pockets of tribal-dominated Malkangiri district witnessing more Naxal attacks in the days to come. It is not the police alone who can fight the Naxals. The local level administration and the political bosses who continue to neglect the backward areas would have to make sincere efforts to play their respective roles in fighting the Naxal menace.