Raju Modiyam –
India’s blood-soaked six-decade Maoist insurgency may be over, but a lethal legacy remains: hundreds of crude land mines planted by the rebels along forest tracks.
For decades, Maoist fighters seeded vast stretches of central India’s forests with pressure-operated improvised explosive devices (IEDs), often buried just beneath dirt roads or hidden along jungle footpaths.
Rudimentary in design — gelatin, ball bearings and metal fragments packed into a steel lunch box — they were nonetheless devastatingly effective, say those who fought the insurgency.
