India stunned as Maoists' bold jail raid spells growing power

The figures said it all - 340 prisoners freed, 10 'class enemies' and policemen killed, while all of about 700 heavily armed attackers except one escaped after pulling off the biggest jailbreak operation by Maoist guerillas in India.

As the enormity of last Sunday night's attack on Jehanabad jail in Bihar sank in, New Delhi's ruling Congress Party called it a 'grave threat to India's constitutional and democratic system'. And Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's federal government despatched elite National Security Guards (NSG) commandos to hunt down ultra-left insurgents who swear by China's Mao Zedong.

The NSG has a tough task - the hit-and-run squads melted into the shadows after the raid. Counter-insurgency experts warned tracking them down might take months.

A headline in The Times of India newspaper, 'Maoists can strike at free will', summed up the general feeling of helplessness.

The outlawed rebels, now the focus of a fierce debate, say they're practising Mao's strategy of guerilla warfare and armed insurrection to create a genuinely socialist republic for India's impoverished and badly exploited landless lower castes and tribespeople.

Over the years, thousands of security forces and Maoist cadres have died in the fight. Successive national governments branded the insurgency as the biggest threat to India's security even as Maoists carved out a 'red corridor' from the border with Nepal in the north to the deep south.