RAJGANGPUR (Sundargarh): With a presence along the Maoist-infested Odisha-Jharkhand border, the dreaded criminal extortion outfit, People’s Liberation Front of India (PLFI), seems to be expanding their base by fanning out to new areas.Reports said a hand-written poster in broken English was found at Kansbahal station and another in Hindi at a dilapidated house near the Rajgangpur level-crossing in Sundargarh district, on Wednesday. The posters carried the name of a self-professed PLFI area commander, Bijay Kant.On Friday night, Rajgangpur Police had arrested a local PLFI member, while his Jharkhand-based counterparts managed to flee.Police sources said though pasting posters at isolated locations involves minimum risk, it evokes desired results to highlight the outfit and added that the PLFI was now eyeing Rajgangpur industrial belt. In the last four years, the PLFI had spread its tentacles in areas under Raiboga, Birmitrapur and Hathibari police limits while its impact was partly felt in Bisra police limits. The outfit was also allegedly involved in an extortion-related murder in Nuagaon block and had demanded a hefty amount from a bridge construction firm of Jhirpani.The local police are groping in the dark with little information except for the fact that it is a Jharkhand-based criminal outfit.Sources in Jharkhand claimed that runaway Maoist cadres had formed PLFI. Using their jungle life experience to dodge the police, they are having a field day. Their modus operandi is to rope in local criminals, step up publicity drives, send threat calls to preys and occasionally indulge in violence to create terror. Between 2008 and 2010, a similar criminal outfit, Jharkhand Badshaw (JB), taking advantage of the Maoists menace in forests along Odisha-Jharkhand border had ruled the roost. But arrest of top JB criminals from Jharkhand had crippled the outfit.DIG (WR) YK Jethwa said special teams of the Sundargarh and Rourkela district police are on the trail of the PLFI members and gathering intelligence to tame the outfit, adding that it would soon be eliminated.
Comments
0 comment