Jharkhand's Saranda forest now accessible to security forces

The dense forest in Saranda covering sal trees spread over an area of 85,500 hectares in Seraikela-Kharswan district in Jharkhand had been the hideouts and training centre of the CPI (Maoist), Kisan Krantikari Committee (KKS) and Nari Mukti Sangh (NMS).

Security forces claimed that they had recently been able to push out the Maoists from the forest of Saranda and this year on the Independence Day tricolour was hoisted at Tirilposhi village in Saramda by the CRPF inspector general (operation) D K Pandey after the state of Jharkhand was constituted in 2000.

Saranda forest with a copious collection of flora embodied with 700 hills had once been the private hunting reserve of the former Kharswan rulers Singh Deos.

The Saranda forest area consisting 700 hills hardly has half-a-dozen notified and mapped villages, where the police and the government machinery did not have any control since the constitution of Jharkhand as a separate state, bifurcating Bihar in 2000.

The absence of police and the government machinery in Saranda forest had helped the banned outfits to run a parallel government in the isolated villages in Saranda with the help of over a dozen camps.

The banned outfits with their entry in the forests of Saranda in 2000, recruited hundreds of youths establishing a major training camp comprising concrete accommodations, bathrooms, separate for men and women on over five acres of land in the Saranda forests. The outfits acquired confidence form the villagers through distribution of land among landless and resolving the local disputes.