The Maoists gouged out the eyes and chopped off the tongue of a CRPF man while he was probably still alive during an ambush at Ambatikar forest in Jharkhand’s Latehar area on January 6.
A senior police officer said on Friday that the basis of the suspicion was that the jawan, Shankar Lal, was “found with his hands tied behind his back”.

He said the Maoists had practised planting light-sensitive improvised explosive devices on animals for six months before placing the bombs into the stomach of two other CRPF men.

As security forces mounted an offensive against the Maoists, government officers in Delhi said Prabhat Mochi, the arrested general secretary of the Maoists' Koel-Sankh zonal committee that covers Jharkhand, parts of Bihar and north Chhattisgarh, gave details of how the method of planting bombs in the stomach was perfected.

One bomb had exploded while the body was being removed from the jungles. But CRPF officials thought it was a pressure bomb Maoists use to booby-trap bodies of slain policemen.

The second body was flown to Ranchi’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences for autopsy where doctors spotted stitches in the abdomen and called in
senior police officers.