The Hindu

• Sathyanarayana Rao headed the ANF during his term as IGP (Western Range)
• He visited the house of school teacher Bhoja Shetty
• Police asked to step up combing operations

Karkala, May 15: Following a direction from the State Government, Additional Commissioner of Police (Administration), Bangalore, H N Sathyanarayana Rao visited Nadapal and other areas on Sunday, May 14.

A group of Naxalites had attacked the house of school teacher Bhoja Shetty at Nadapal in Hebri police station limits on Saturday.

Sathyanarayana Rao had served as Inspector-General of Police (Western Range), covering Udupi, Dakshina Kannada, Uttara Kannada and Chikmagalur districts and is well versed with the Naxalite problem. Rao also headed the Anti-Naxal Force (ANF) set up by the government during his term as Inspector-General of Police of the range.

The post of Inspector-General of Police (Western Range) headquartered here is vacant after K S Suresh Babu, Additional Director-General of Police (Western Range) retired on April 30. Although the government had initially posted Inspector-General of Police (Intelligence) Raghavendra Auradkar to succeed Babu, the appointment was withdrawn later.

Sources in the Police Department said here on Sunday that Sathyanarayana Rao visited the ANF camp and interacted with the personnel there.  He visited Shetty's house as well as Hebri and Karkala police stations to get information on the movement and operations of Naxalites in the area. Sathyanarayana Rao instructed the police to step up combing operations.

Although the government has fully empowered Sathyanarayana Rao to deal with any attempts by Naxalites to disturb peace in the region, it is learnt that the official has reposed faith in the ground-level officers to tackle any situation, while being on hand to provide operational instructions.