Superintendent of Police of Pakur district, Amarjit Balihar killed in a Maoist attack in Jharkhand. Several other police officials were also feared killed or injured in the attack.
"Two vehicles were ambushed in Jharkhand. Five people including Pakur SP have died," Jharkhand DGP said.
Four policemen were injured, two of them critically wounded, in the attack.
The attack comes more than a month after Maoists ambushed a convoy of senior Congress leaders at Darbha Ghat in tribal Bastar district of Chattisgarh, killing 27 people, including Congress leader Mahendra Karma on the spot. State Congress chief VC Shukla who was critically injured in the attack, died a few days later.
The attack had prompted several Maoist-infested states to launch, with Centre’s help, a massive combing operation involving elite anti-Maoist paramilitary force, CoBRA. About 5,000 state police personnel and five CRPF battalions (about 5,000 men) had started combing the forests in Bastar with 5.56mm INSAS rifles and communication gear.
The operation was aimed at hunting the attackers down, especially the main accused of the May 25 attack, Vinod Sema, secretary of the CPI-ML's Darba committee, and Madkami Sema alias Surendra.
But Maoists carried out an audacious attack more than a fortnight later, when a group comprising women cadres, stopped a train, looted the arms of the escort party and killed two security personnel and a civilian.
The rebels, also known as Naxals, have fought for decades in a wide swathe of central and eastern India, including many resource-rich regions where tensions run high between poor farmers and industrial developers.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoist insurgency as India's biggest internal security challenge.
