Gunning for Maoists

On the night of April 23, two parties of around 50 police personnel in combat fatigues converged on an isolated riverine island in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district. The intelligence was precise-a large group of Maoists had gathered for a meeting. The C-60, the district's counter-Maoist force, opened fire with their AK-47s on the cornered Maoists. When the shooting stopped, 22 Maoists lay dead on the island. The bodies of another 10 Maoists would be fished out of the Indravati river. A day later, another C-60 party killed eight Maoists in the Rajaram Khandla forests. Setting up the sort of trap the Maoists usually do for the police, the C-60 troopers, most of them from local tribes and with an innate sense of the terrain and trained to fight like the guerrillas, had turned the hunters into the hunted.

The C-60's first major