Bastar: Three more bodies of Maoists were found on Wednesday morning in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, where a gunfight had taken place between security forces and the ultras a day ago, police said. With this, the number of Maoists killed in the gunfight on Tuesday has risen to 13, said police.
The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the Chhattisgarh Police on Tuesday gunned down 10 Maoists in the Bijapur district, taking the number of insurgents killed thus far this year to 47, up from 22 in all of 2023.
The fierce gunfight started near the Kendra-Korcholi jungles under the Gangaloor police station – a Communist Party of India (Maoist) controlled area – around 6am when a joint team of security personnel was out on an anti-naxal operation, according to officials.
Officials said that acting on specific inputs, the operation was launched on Monday evening from four security camps.
Officials said that they received intelligence of a gathering of Maoist cadre on Monday following which around 3000 security personnel from multiple agencies — the Chhattisgarh Police’s District Reserve Guard and Special Task Force, the Central Reserve Police Force and its elite guerilla unit Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (COBRA) were deployed from the Gangaloor, Cherpal, Basaguda, Palnar, Pusnar and Mudvendi camps in the district.
Senior police officers said search and sanitisation operations at the encounter spot continued late into the night; while none of the dead rebels have thus far been identified, that process will start once security personnel are safely back in their camps. Two CRPF personnel were hurt. One, Rajendra Kumar, was injured in an IED blast as security forces returned and another, Sandeep Kumar, sustained a bullet injury.
The deaths are the biggest blow for the Maoists in Chhattisgarh after July 2019 when seven insurgents were killed in an operation near the Odisha border in Bastar district’s Nagarnar area. Government records also show that cadre of the banned CPI (Maoist) have killed 19 civilians since January 2024, with 42 civilians killed in the 12 months of 2023.
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