NEW DELHI, Dec 20: India’s Maoist guerillas have stepped up their insurgency and a dedicated security force must be set up to eliminate “this virus,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Thursday.

Last year, Singh described the ultra-leftist revolutionaries as the biggest single threat to internal security.

“It continues to be so and we cannot rest in peace till we have eliminated this virus,” Singh told an internal security meeting attended by state chief ministers in the Indian capital.

Singh’s statements came as police reported they had arrested a top Maoist leader and a female accomplice who were hiding out in the town of Ankamaly in southern Kerala state.

Malla Raji Reddy, accused of killing a former speaker of the Ahdhra Pradesh legislature, was in charge of the “revolutionary movement” in India’s southwest and a hefty one-million-rupee ($25,000) reward had been issued for his arrest, police said.

The Maoist insurgency, which grew out of a peasant uprising in 1967, threatens huge swathes of India’s centre, east and south and has spread to half of the nation’s 29 states from just four in 1996.

“Although the notions of a red corridor from Nepal to Andhra Pradesh are exaggerated, we have to admit they have achieved some degree of success in enlarging their areas of militancy,” Singh said.

The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of neglected tribal people and landless farmers and say their ultimate goal is to capture India’s cities and overthrow parliament.

Singh’s comments also followed a dramatic jailbreak over the weekend in which nearly 300 prisoners, including scores of Maoist rebels, escaped in eastern India. The jailbreak was not an isolated incident of Maoist activity, Singh said.

“Not a day passes without an incident of left-wing extremism taking place somewhere or the other,” he said.

Over the last few years, the Maoists have targeted important economic facilities and killed important political leaders, he said.

“We need to cripple Naxalite (Maoist) forces with all the means at our command,” he said, and asked the states to set up “specialised and dedicated” forces to combat extremism.

“Intelligence agencies warn of further intensification of violent activities by terror groups,” Singh added.—AFP