Palamu (Jharkhand): A Maoists technical expert was killed in a police Naxalite encounter at Palamu Chatra border in Jharkhand on Monday, officials said. The deceased has been identified as Ajit alias Charlies, who served the Maoists as technical experts and was developing improvised missiles for them, along with another techie named Gautam Paswan. Officials said he had also made rocket launchers for Maoists on Jharkhand-Bihar border.
The encounter was launched based on disclosure by security forces during a campaign in June 2022 in Chhakarbandha on the Jharkhand-Bihar border, confirming that Ajit was developing an improvised missile. The officials had received a video of Ajit building the missile.
Ajit's missile making test however seemed to have failed, as the officials also recovered remains of the missile from the spot where the encounter was conducted. Officials suspect he was using YouTube and other sources on the internet to build the said missile. He has also been found to be the mastermind behind several war methods and landmines.
The officials informed that Ajit was a resident of Naina village of Balumath in Latehar, and had joined the Maoist squad at a tender age of 8. After joining the squad, he never returned back home. "In the Maoist squad, Ajit had several names -- he was known as Toofanji, Charlies, Charlies Oraon. Together, Gautam Paswan and Ajit had developed many techniques of landmines on the Jharkhand-Bihar border and surrounded the entire area with landmines," an official said.
In June 2015-16, 10 CoBRA soldiers were killed in a Maoist attack on the Aurangabad-Gaya border. It was Gautam and Ajit who had planted land mines in the entire area for this attack. They would also teach other cadres of Maoists how to make landmines and how to plant them.
