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Soroor Ahmed in Patna
With the killing of 13 policemen, Jharkhand became only the second state after Jammu and Kashmir to have witnessed maximum police casualties in the last few weeks.
More than 40 of them have lost their lives at the hand of extremists since mid-August.
The seriousness of the situation can be gauged from the fact that those killed in the past few weeks include a deputy superintendent of police and two sub inspectors.
While one dozen CRPF men lost their lives on September 23 attack in Hazaribagh district, about a dozen more lost their lives in three other such incidents in Latehar, Giridih and Hazaribagh districts in the same month.
The daring MCC attack on CRPF on September 23 and on Jharkhand police on October 31 took the authorities by complete surprise and it knocked the bottom of the Marandi government's claim of destroying their bunkers.
The Wednesday attack, unlike the previous jungle ambushes, took place in the heart of Topchanchi town.
Topchanchi is only six kilometres from the prominent railway junction of Gomoh, and it was the weekly market day, when the militants attacked the policemen.
The extremists decamped with 18 self-loading rifles, two sten guns and 2,000 rounds of ammunition.
Eyewitnesses said the MCC men used these captured weapons to kill the police.
Never before in the history of the ultra-left movement in Bihar, and what is now Jharkhand, have so many policemen been killed in such a short time.
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