Raipur, Oct 23 (Inditop.com) Five members of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) were arrested in a hamlet in Chhattisgarh’s southern restive area of Bijapur, police here said Friday.

The arrests were made late Thursday by a police team led by district superintendent of police, Avinash Mohanty, in the hamlet amid the forests of Jungla, about 500 km from here.

“All the five arrested Maoists had been actively involved in several major attacks in the district in the recent past; we were looking for them desperately,” Mohanty told Inditop over phone.

Police recovered explosives and Maoist literature from them.

Bijapur is a part of the vast Bastar region. Police say about 1,500 people were killed in the state since 2004 in Maoist violence; 90 percent of the casualties were reported from Bastar, spread out over 40,000 sq km.