Some 250 km south of Rajnandgaon where 24 policemen were killed in Sunday’s deadly ambush, a larger and longer-term Naxal project — with wider and more dangerous ramifications — is currently under way.

Maoist guerrillas are working to free up a jungle corridor that connects Visakhapatnam district in Andhra Pradesh with Dantewada in the heart of Chhattisgarh’s rebel stronghold, Andhra police officers said.

If completed, the corridor will pass through the districts of Koraput and Malkangiri in south Orissa, giving control of a large area in the Andhra-Orissa-Chhattisgarh border area to the Maoists, and allow rebel cadres and arms to travel freely from the coast to deep inland.

In the event of a crackdown by the state in Chhattisgarh or Jharkhand to the north, Maoist leaders and cadre can use the corridor to escape into the thickly forested tribal areas on the Andhra-Orissa border, officers said.

“If the Maoists succeed in creating the corridor, large swathes of the region will pass under their control. Police action will be difficult because three states will need to work in coordination, and the Maoists will manage to move seamlessly between states,” said Shivadhar Reddy, DIG, Special Intelligence Bureau, Andhra Pradesh, a unit that deals exclusively with anti-Maoist intelligence and operations.

Reddy said the situation is already serious, and it could take the three states up to two years to win the entire area back if they started immediately.

“The intensified Maoist activity in Koraput and Malkangiri districts in Orissa indicates that they are going beyond the control of the administration. The situation is the same in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada, which is a hotbed of Maoists. If they manage to create a link that extends from the forests on the Andhra-Orissa border through Koraput and Malkangiri to Dantewada and down to the Khammam district border, they will have a very large area to operate in. States will find it difficult to bring them back under their control,” said Reddy.

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