Monday, 05 April 2021 | Sujeet Kumar | Bijapur
Bodies of 20 more jawans recovered in Bijapur Naxal ambush
After bullet-riddled bodies of 20 jawans were recovered by police in the jungles of Chattisgarh on Sunday, the numbers of security personnel killed in a fierce gunbattle with Naxals on Saturday have increased to 22. The biggest massacre in more than a year which also left 31 injured, has been attributed to a major intelligence and operational failure against the Naxals.
Over a 1,000 police personnel drawn from CRPF’s elite CoBRA, District Reserve Guard (DRG) and Special Task Force (STF) walked into a deadly trap of Maoists in a deep jungle of rebels-dominated patch in Chhattisgarh’s restive Bastar purely on an unverified intelligence input that top ultra leader Madvi Hidma is holed up at a hilly site along with his colleagues.
But the input was basically a well-planned trap of Maoist guerillas as they gunned down 22 security personnel and walked away with their weapons. The casualty figure could further rise as at least 31 cops sustained multiple gunshots and were airlifted to Raipur for better medical attention.
The pitched gunfight between Maoists and security personnel broke out on Saturday at a remote hilly site of Bijapur district close to Sukma district border in sprawling Bastar division where Maoists have been attempting to run a de facto Government in deep forests since late 1980s.
“Guerillas armed with heavy weapons, including rocket launchers, were waiting for security personnel contingent, once a larger team of the search operation approached a hill, the militants who were positioned on top of the hill started spraying bullets in a flash from three sides,” a local DRG policeman who was part of the search team told The Pioneer.
The attack site is located roughly 500 km south of State capital Raipur.
He said, “The securitymen were stunned by Maoists’ heavy gunshots, actually it was an ambush designed in U-shape but the troopers too retaliated.” Reports said Maoists brought 3-4 tractors on Saturday night at the attack site to ferry dead bodies of their comrades. The local police officials are now claiming that intelligence inputs would have been verified from multiple credible sources before rushing a larger team to catch Hidma, one of the most wanted terror faces of the mineral-rich Bastar. The brutal killing of troopers has created a widespread anger in the State and people in tribal stronghold Bastar have called for an immediate revenge.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah earlier in the day spoke to Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel over the phone and had a detailed discussion on the gunfight with the Maoists.
Baghel was also busy in campaigning for the Congress in Assam and he returned to Raipur late evening.
Shah said the State and the Centre will jointly win the battle against the Maoists and assured Baghel of all help to tackle the Leftist insurgency.
He informed the Chief Minister that he had issued instructions to the Director General of CRPF to visit the site of the incident and take appropriate action.
Chhattisgarh’s Bastar division which is made up of seven districts, including Bijapur and Sukma, has been the epicentre of major Maoists attacks in past three decades.
Rebels had killed 76 CRPF men in a single attack in April 2010 in Bastar which is described the deadliest attack by Maoists on security forces in India. In May 2013, Maoists carried out an audacious attack on a Congress party convoy at Jheeram ghati in Bastar in which entire top-ranked leaders of the party in the state were wiped out including then state chief Nandkumar Patel, popular tribal leader Mahendra Karma and former union minister VC Shukla.
