Police gun down four Maoist rebels in Jharkhand

Hazaribagh, June 1 : Police has gunned down four Maoists rebels including a woman in an encounter in Jharkhand on Sunday.

According to the police officials the rebels were shot dead in an encounter with police having little striking force.

"With a little striking force, the extremists were killed in a planned and well calculated operation. The four extremists including one Vijay Kumar were shot dead. We have also recovered huge quantity of arms," said Praveen Kumar, Superintendent of Police Hazaribagh district.

The police team has also recovered a huge cache of arms from the rebels.

The guerrilla war by Maoists poses the country's biggest internal security threat and Jharkhand is one of the 13 affected by it.

Also known as Naxalites, they say they are fighting on behalf of the rural poor and landless and want to build a communist state.

The government has recently taken a new stance on the Maoist insurgency, pulling the affected states together to coordinate their response. It says it will combine improved policing with socio-economic measures to defuse grievances that fuel the Maoist cause.

ANI