DALTONGANJ: Villages around Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR) are safe havens for CPI (Maoist) where the Maoists run their writ. One such village is Ukamar under Project Tiger division while another is Ghaseedag village.
At Mandal village, a superintending engineer of north koyal Baijnath Mishra was killed in the late 90s and a small portion of the Mandal dam was also damaged by extremists belonging to Mazdoor Kissan Sangharsh Samiti.
At Kolpurwa village, security forces battled with the Maoists. Hehegara is a village of this tiger division which hit the national news stand not for any sighting of tigers but for the Naxals repeated assault on the rail tracks here.
According to directorate Project Tiger records, there are 199 villages in and around Palamu Tiger Reserve. Villages like Kaer and Labher areNaxal dens where Naxals trigger land mines as easily as children explode crackers, said a tracker of the Betla National Park, who refused to be identified.
The member of the National Tiger Conservation Authority Management Effective Evaluation East and North East D S Srivastava agreed that infestation of Naxals is here in majority of 199 villages here.
Srivastava reminded that Naxals had restored five huge tusks stolen by thieves to the authority in the mid 90s here. Five huge tusks were stolen from the Nature Interpretation Centre in Betla which were later recovered by the Naxals in which top functionaries of the Palamu Tiger Project had also participated.
Srivastava wanted project officials to strike an emotional chord with these villages and their people for a better co ordination. The director, P Upadhaya, has gone on record to say that a large segment of the total 30 segments of the Tiger Reserve here are unwatched because of the infestations of the extremists.
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