The drive, code-named Operation Spider Web, is foundering because of faulty strategy, police betrayal and lack of intelligence, sources said.

The operation by the Bangladesh Rifles, police and ansar forces has so far yielded the arrest of 60 low-profile criminals, seizure of seven light firearms and grilling of a large number of innocent people, they said.

"So far the joint forces have failed to catch a single kingpin, because they have left the region," a source noted.

Police raided the house of Abdur Rashid Tapan, boss of the Purbo Banglar Communist Party (PBCP), in Khulna, but could not arrest him or seize his collection of sophisticated weapons.

He commands a dozen of light machine guns and satellite communication devices, sources said.

The forces began the operation on Saturday in Dumuria, Dighalia and Fultala upazilas in Khulna district and Fakirhat and Mollarhat in Bagerhat.

They divided the hotbed of outlaw activities into four sectors strategically and set up headquarters in Jessore, Jhenidah, Satkhira and Pirojpur.

The strategists of the drive thought the criminals of Khulna will try to escape through Jessore, Jhenidah and Satkhira while the criminals of Bagerhat will escape through Pirojpur once the operation gets underway.

The operation blueprint said after the beginning of the drive, the joint forces would comb through the pockets of underground operatives in each union and fan out in the entire region like cobweb.

But proving the strategy erroneous, the outlaws melted away through Gopalganj.

Some policemen maintaining cosy links with the criminals also tipped the outlaws off the drive ahead of its launch, sources said.

Besides, the joint forces could not surprise the criminals as words of the operation spread in the air days before the drive began.

"The total budget for the operation has been fixed at taka six crore," said a police official involved in the crackdown. "We have already received taka two crore."

Under the operation, taka one crore has so far been spent to gather information about the criminals operating in the region.

A number of army officers have been deputed to the BDR and assigned to the drive. Each of them has been given Tk 25,000 as 'source money' to gather information on the criminals, the sources added.

But many officers could not spend the money as their sources of information went into hiding along with the criminals.

Home Secretary Omar Faruk, however, denied the involvement of any army officer in the operation.

The operation was likely to continue for 15 days, but it may lurch into extra time in view of the low success achieved so far, the sources said.

Three main underground parties -- Purbo Banglar Communist Party (PBCP), Biplobi Communist Party-Haq Group (BCP) and New Biplobi Communist Party are locked in perennial armed struggles in the southwestern region.

Some of their splinter groups are also involved in sheer criminal activities, sources said.

The decades old turf war between arch-rivals PBCP and BCP, believers in extermination of class enemy, gathered pace recently and at least 34 people, including local people's representatives and policemen, were killed in 15 days prior to the beginning of the operation.

Traditionally the extremists were largely armed with 303 rifles, double-barrel guns and in some cases with sten guns, smuggled into Bangladesh by gunrunners from India.

But now the outlaws have equipped themselves with sophisticate modern weapons including submachine guns, AK-47 and other types of assault rifles, available in the black market of Chittagong and the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Extreme left politics trickled into the southwestern region from eastern Indian state of West Bengal where the ideology thrived in 1960s.