It had all the ingredients of a blockbuster action movie. The anti-hero had set up an illegal colony of over 500 semi-permanent wood houses inside a forest. The gang was indulging in rampant tree-felling and timber smuggling. They had already cleared 6000 hectares of forest. The entire area with small hillocks had been converted into a fortress. No administration – forest or police – was allowed to enter the forests. Anybody violating the warning would be beaten up mercilessly.

The illegal colony set up the encroachers in Madhya Pradesh’s Burhanpur had three layers of security. The first layer of informants would snoop around the town for any impending action against the colony, second layer consisted to about a 100 ‘warriors’ armed with bow, arrows and huge mounted catapults, locally called gofan – capable of hurling huge stones. Their leader had even named the colony KGF, after a popular movie released last year on a similar theme.

It was a catastrophe. Something needed to be done urgently. Especially after the encroachers attacked a police station and freed some of their associates. The administration woke up, gathered its armaments and launched an operation that last 17 days but ended up in getting the forest land vacated from all encroachments. Indian Masterminds exclusively spoke with SP Rahul Kumar Lodha IPS, to understand how the entire operation was planned and enacted.

OPERATION KGF

Encroachers were urged to surrender and leave the swamp as a point of contact between tribals living in the forest area and police broke after October 2022. The encroachers, mostly timber smugglers, raided the Bakdi forest outpost in November 2022. But the administration lost all patience when encroachers attacked the Nepanagar police station at 3.30-4.00 am on April 7 this year, thrashed the three cops present there to a pulp, and forcibly got their arrested comrades and leader Hema Meghwal released from police custody.

A top-secret operation was immediately launched to end encroachment and save the forests. SP Lodha said: “We named it KGF because that is where wanted to hit, the empire. And also to keep them confused. In case any information leaked.” 

The police and forest department collaborated to execute the plan. They summoned fortified riot vehicles Vajra to neutralise the stones rained on them by encroachers through gofan. They also fortified some bulldozers by putting iron sheets and iron mesh around them. They got tear gas shells and a huge police contingent. But, their secret weapon, and a most successful one, proved to be a microphone-fitted drone.

A CRITICAL ACTION

SP Lodha and his team had a difficult task at hand. They knew most of the encroachers had been brainwashed by a handful – Meghwal, Phool Singh, and Rev Singh who had transformed the jungle into their mini fiefdom. They had convinced their fellow encroachers that police would never be able to penetrate their fortress, much less think of harming them.

Thousands of hectares were raised to build over 500 tapris (makeshift residential units made of timber) around a hillock. The summit of the hillock served as both the watch tower and abode of the gang leader Phool Singh. Singh had a bird’s eye view of all things entering and leaving “his forest”. Having the advantage of height he could access mobile network, while police and forest officials entering the ‘fortress’ would encounter a highly erratic cellular network.

FIGHTING DISADVANTAGES

That’s why the police innovated using drones carrying microphones as payloads. Now the police had both eyes-ears and even a voice up above. They positioned drones 500m above the hillock to track the encroachers. Calling them out over microphone gave the police a psychological advantage.

“We could tell them their exact loactions, what they were doing, what they were wearing and what arms they were using. The criminals were completely confounded as we asked them to surrender. The loud noise from drones overhead befooled them. Though we were 2 km away, they felt they had been surrounded from all sides. They laid down their arms and ran. Over 1000 were taken into custody,” Mr Lodha recounted.

The JCBs used to remove the tapris were overnight turned into transformer versions. Overnight, ironsmiths were commissioned to cover them with iron nets.

The entire “KGF” was broken on the second day of the operation, which demotivated the encroachers and gave the officials an advantage.

“We also built makeshift network tower on the roofs of our cars to avoid low network connectivity, which helped us communicate effectively,” said Mr. Lodha, who and his ASP headed two teams besides 18 others which were spread around the forest.

The fact that not a single policeman was injured in the entire operation, tells volumes about the extent of planning that went into it and pricise execution of the plan, said Mr Lodha.

(Please read the background of this action-packed blockbuster in the second part of the story)