Chintalnad, Chhattisgarh:
NDTV's Suddhi Ranjan Sen has been reporting from ground zero in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district on the massacre of 75 CRPF jawans.
Now an NDTV exclusive report on a ten-year-old girl who was taken captive by the Maoists because she spotted them, luckily they released her later.
At the banks of Sabri River, 30 kilometres from the spot in Chintalnad Forest, where Maoists killed 76 jawans on the morning of April 6, a few villagers walking through the forest saw about a big group of Maoists at the river bank.
Here they left behind a vital clue: A 10-year-old girl from a nearby village who has seen them retreating after the ambush.
They couldn't leave her behind, worried she may led the police to them. So they carried her up to the river bank and left her.
So, on the bank of the river Sabri, the Maoists were spotted last. So where did they go? The river perhaps holds the answer.
Sabri River virtually divides Orissa and Chattisgarh. In fact, half-a-kilometre from here starts Malkangiri, which is completely dominated by the Maoists. In the days to come, as operations intensify Malkangiri is going to increasingly come under focus.
- Intelligence agencies say, the Maoist attackers split three ways about a hundred of them in each group.
- One group entered the Palamchalama forest in Andhra
- The second group got into the dense forests of Dornapal in Chhattisgarh
- The remaining crossed over to Malkangiri in Orissa
In Orissa, nearly 300 jawans have lost their lives in the last two years in anti-Naxal operations.
Here in Orissa, the language and script might have changed but the terrain and the problems remain the same.
A village here is called 91: Known by a number not a name. That's because this is one of the refugee resettlement colonies for those who crossed over from Bangladesh during the 1965 Indo-Pak War and then again during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.
Decades have passed but they still live like refugees: In this widespread poverty and underdevelopment, the Maoists find their toehold.
''We live in fear because suddenly they come ask for money. They ask for food. They said, make food for us. If we don't listen to them, they create trouble," said Subhash Debnath, resident of village 91.
A few kilometres away in Madanguda, NDTV finds an explanation for the Maoist control,
a local boy Mahesh does not go to school instead he works in a brick kiln for livelihood.
Caught between acute poverty and state apathy, the Maoist have become the unofficial administrators.
"There is no power supply. We get only four litres of kerosene every month. It is very difficult. We need power, water, doctors," said Mahesh, resident of Madanguda village.
Whether it is Malkangiri here in Orissa or adjoining Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, this is kind of the terrain one needs to dominate. Not only boots on the ground that matter but also the support and trust of the locals. The big question is: has the government been able to get that trust.