Raipur, Nov 4 : Deep inside the thick forests of Chhattisgarh's Sukma district, a hidden Naxalite weapons factory lies in ruins today, its machinery smashed and its stockpiles seized by a swift raid from the District Reserve Guard (DRG).

Acting on precise intelligence, the DRG team slipped through the undergrowth near the Koimenta-Erapalli belt and uncovered a full-scale ordnance unit that Maoists had nursed for months, hoping to arm a fresh wave of attacks.

What the jawans found was no makeshift shed but a camouflaged workshop humming under solar panels. Seventeen country-made rifles, each capable of sustained fire, lay half-assembled beside barrel-grenade launchers designed to shred patrols.

Piles of steel rods, trigger mechanisms, lathe machines, drilling bits and welding kits filled the cavernous hideout, while crates of gelatin sticks, detonators and circuit boards waited to become roadside bombs.

Sukma Superintendent of Police (SP) Kiran Chavan later told reporters that surrendered cadres had whispered the location weeks earlier, proof that fear now travels faster than ideology inside Maoist ranks.

Across Bastar this year, 249 Naxalites have fallen in gunfights, among them the movement's General Secretary Nambala Keshav Rao. One officer who walked the site described the air thick with the smell of gun oil and fresh metal shavings.

Blueprints pinned to bark showed plans for rifles that could match army-issue accuracy, a desperate bid to replace the hundreds of weapons lost in encounters this year.

With winter closing in and local elections on the horizon, the factory was the rebels' lifeline; its destruction has snapped that line clean. The entire complex was razed before dusk, flames licking the treetops as explosives were safely detonated.

Every jawan returned to Metaguda camp without a scratch, their radios crackling with quiet triumph.

Two hundred and twenty of those deaths occurred in the same seven districts that cradle Sukma, turning once-impenetrable jungles into hunting grounds for security forces. Villagers who once paid levies now watch DRG columns pass with folded hands, sensing the red corridor shrinking one burnt workshop at a time.

For the Maoists, the loss is more than metal and powder; it is the collapse of a dream to fight another season. For the forces, it is another dawn patrol scheduled deeper into the green hell, chasing the next hidden spark before it can ignite.

"The timing couldn't be worse for them," the SP added. "With 249 Naxalites neutralised statewide this year alone ' including top CPI(Maoist) General Secretary Nambala Keshav Rao ' this factory was their desperate bid to bounce back. We ensured it became their graveyard."

/IANS