A day after a gunfight between Gadchiroli police and Naxals left 26 ultras, including a top leader Milind Teltumbde, dead, a senior official on Sunday said the number of people getting recruited from the district, some 170 kilometres from Nagpur, into the outlawed movement was steadily falling.

Gadchiroli Superintendent of Police Ankit Goyal said the arrest, surrender and neutralization of ultras had led a fall in the response from the youth to the Maoist ideology powering the Naxal movement. "Out analysis shows 40 per cent of active Naxals in Gadchiroli district have been recruited from outside," he said.