NIA Team Raids Malkangiri Village In Odisha Over Suspected Maoist Activities

Malkangiri: A National Investigation Agency (NIA) team on Thursday raided Anantapalli village under Motu police limits in Odisha’s Malkangiri district over suspected Maoist activities.

According to sources, the team from Hyderabad arrived at the village at around 3 am and carried out a raid at the house of one Mantosh Mandal with the help of Border Security Force (BSF) and District Voluntary Force (DVF), Malkangiri.

Searches were also conducted in houses of two of his associates.

Sources further stated that simultaneous raids are also on at two locations within the Sukma area of neighbouring Chhattisgarh.

The NIA is yet to release an official statement related to the raid.

This comes three months after police busted a Maoist supply network with the arrest of two persons – Mantosh Mandal (28) of Chintalnar in Sukma district, and S Nagarjuna from East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, and seizure of materials used in explosives from them. Two boxes of potassium nitrate, two kilograms of urea powder, three boxes of aluminum powder, one tiffin bomb, two detonators, Maoist literature, one laptop, a mobile SIM card and a mobile phone were recovered after their arrest from Devi Chowk in Patnampara.

The duo reportedly confessed to having been supplying gun powder, explosive materials, chemicals, detonators, walkie-talkie and ration items to People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) battalion no. 1 since 2020.

Last month, Malkangiri police also apprehended a member of the Uday Protection Team with a bounty of Rs 2 lakh on her head from Kurti jungle under MV-79 police station limits. She was involved in nine incidents of gunfight with security forces in Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh between 2018 and 2021, according to DIG (South-Western Range) Niti Shekhar.