Even as Maoists in Keonjhar district on Friday killed a contractor, suspecting him of being a police informer, the Orissa Director General of Police has claimed that the situation has not gone out of control in the Maoist hotbed of Malkangiri.

Contractor Tukuna Sahu’s body was found bearing deep gashes near a pond in Harichandanpur village of Keonjhar early on Friday. The Maoists had left a handwritten note near his body saying they had been looking for Sahu for a long time as “he was a police informer”.

Meanwhile, the Maoists seemed to be having a field day in Malkangiri with their three-day bandh call paralysing the district since Wednesday. The rebels felled hundreds of trees on both sides of the Malkangiri-Koraput road, blocking all movement of vehicles.

On Thursday afternoon, the Maoists had set ablaze five vehicles of the Essar Steel company at Ralegada under Chitrakonda police limits in Malkangiri. But DGP Manmohan Praharaj said that only a tiny part of Malkangiri was out of the state Government’s control.

Praharaj said a battalion of the CRPF, deployed in Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar districts, was being sent to Malkangiri and Koraput districts in the next 15 days. “We are facing difficulties in training securitymen to fight Maoists in the jungles and difficult terrain of Malkangiri and other places. The eastern part of Malkangiri is difficult terrain and it borders Khammam in Andhra Pradesh and Dantewada in Chhatisgarh,” Praharaj said. The Orissa DGP admitted that lack of infrastructure was hampering the fight against the Maoists in 17 districts of the state.

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