State DGP Bhupinder Singh, who admitted that Kishenji was still in Bengal going by the location of his cellphone, said it was the Maoist leader’s mobility and the lack of local support for the police which are preventing them from netting him.

“We are trying our best to catch him. But for a number of reasons we are yet to arrest him,” said Singh. The police have set up a special task force comprising the best personnel from various branches, including CID’s Special Operations Group and Kolkata police’s Special Task Force, he added.

The closest the police came to catch Kishenji was on the morning of October 23, hours before the Maoists released O-C of Sankrail police station Atindranath Dutta. A police team was within striking distance of Kishenji in the Bhulagara area of Lalgarh “but the plan was abandoned after orders were issued from the top” as the Moaist leader had threatened to kill the abducted O-C, said a senior police officer.

According to top officers of the special task force, the police tried to arrest the Naxal leader on nearly 50 different occasions in the Lalgarh-Jhargram belt, but failed as “he was too fast”. Three teams were even sent to Jharkhand to arrest him but returned empty-handed.

“Kishenji doesn’t stay in a particular place for more than an hour. He shifts his base constantly from one part of the forest to another,” said a senior police officer.

“By the time we gather forces to surround the area, he is gone,” the officer added.

According to police there are two ways of locating cellphones — one through online towers and another through contacting the service providers.

“If the cellphone towers are connected online, we get the location within seconds. But in remote jungle areas most of the towers are not connected online and we have to call service providers who give us the location after a span of two to three hours,” added another officer who is part of the task force.

Adding to this, lack of local support to the police in the Jungalmahal area comprising parts of three districts of Bankura, West Midnapore and Purulia is also a major reason behind the task force’s failure to arrest Kishenji. The police are facing difficulty in getting local intelligence, they said.