(Adds dropped letter in last paragraph) HYDERABAD, India, Jan 30 (Reuters) - A 25-year-old policeman was shot dead by his colleagues in central India after being mistaken for a member of a Maoist rebel group, police said on Tuesday. The incident happened on Monday night when two police forces began firing on each other, both sides believing they were being attacked by Maoist rebels, police said. The two forces, both from the same battalion, had been patrolling close to each other on either side of the border between Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh states. Two policemen were wounded. The accident happened near a Maoist camp in the Khammam district, about 350 km (215 miles) northeast of Hyderabad, the Andhra Pradesh capital. Both police forces had been on the hunt for Maoists who have waged a violent decades-old insurgency, claiming to be fighting for the rights of poor, landless peasants across swathes of central and eastern India.
