The banned Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) having links with the dreaded Peoples War Group (PWG) of Andhra Pradesh gunned down 30 supporters of another naxalite group, the CPI - ML (Liberation) on Saturday night.
The incident took place at Cario village under Laraluttu block falling under Sadar police station in the naxalite infested Chatra district of South Bihar.
While the former state president and spokesman for the party, K D Yadav, put the death toll at 30 including the district committee member, Laxmi Dangi; the state director general of police (DGP), S K Saxena, however, put the death toll at 11.
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Saxena saidthat lethally armed MCC supporters swooped down on the village and fired indiscriminately killing 11 people on the spot. Their bodies had been recovered.
He denied reports that MCC supporters took away the bodies of some of the victims and said that he had asked the district police to confirm the allegations.
Saxena said that all police stations falling under Central and South Bihar had been put on red alert and an intensive combing operation had been launched to flush out the extremists.
On the other hand Yadav was not satisfied with the statement of the DGP. and alleged that the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) government was acting in collusion with MCC and the killings of innocent party workers was taking place at the behest of the RJD. The MCC is being nurtured by Laloo Prasad Yadav, to eliminate his potential rivals, alleged Yadav.
We are not going to sit idle and would soon expose the RJD-MCC nexus, said Yadav and added that a high level committee comprising its polit bureau member, Paras Nagh Tiwari, had been constituted to find the reasons behind the killing.
Yadav said that the general body meeting of the party was to take place at Chatra and preparations were on in full swing. Since the RJD could not eschew the growing influence of the party in South and Central Bihar, it was taking the help of the MCC in enacting such gory killings, he added.