'Forces going deeper into Maoist strongholds with more sky'

NEW DELHI: Aided by latest surveillance tools in the sky, security agencies are now going deeper into naxal strongholds as these new capabilities provide "real-time" information and guide the forces on "adversary" movements, CRPF chief A P Maheshwari has said.

He said the CRPF has procured latest unmanned aerial vehicles and thermal scanners and the lead anti-maoist force was using these tools in combination with ground intelligence from multiple sources. A new "synergy and collaboration" is being worked out between his force, state police units and intelligence agencies to end the Left-wing Extremism (LWE) in near future, the CRPF director general said. "There are certain intelligence agencies which are good at aerial survey and we have integrated those capabilities with the ground level troops and when we are conducting operations, those aerial surveys keep guiding us about the physical location and hideouts of the adversary (Maoists)," Maheshwari said. "Real-time observation from the sky and its integration with other inputs are the few major changes we have undertaken and that is one reason we recently were able to go deep into the stronghold of naxals in Chhattisgarh."

Maheshwari, a 1984-batch Uttar Pradesh cadre IPS officer, said the in-roads made by his force and other agencies have broken the myth that security forces cannot reach interior naxal hotbeds.

He said the forces, led by the Central Reserve Police Force, have gained "more insight" into the Maoist terrain to undertake a "realistic" SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities and threats) analysis.