Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 26: Ten police personnel and the driver of the rented minivan in which the police were travelling were killed in a powerful blast of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) planted by the Maoist insurgents in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh on Wednesday. It was the worst attack on the security forces in the state in the last two years.
The police said the Maoist ambush involved the use of a powerful 50-kg IED that left a massive hole on the road and uprooted trees. The policemen were travelling in a rented mini-van, sources said, adding the vehicle may have been flung at least 20 feet by the force of the explosion.
Visuals of the ambush site in Dantewada district show a big crater that covers the road’s width, indicating the Maoists used a huge quantity of explosives to trigger the ambush. “The Maoists may have used 10 times the quantity of explosives to target the van in which the policemen were travelling,” Major General Ashwini Siwach, the former chief of the Territorial Army said.
“Today, on April 26, DRG force was dispatched from Dantewada for anti-Naxal operation on the intelligence of the presence of Maoist cadre under Police Station Aranpur area of District Dantewada. While they were returning after the operation, an IED was blasted by Maoists on Aranpur road due to which 10 DRG jawans + 01 driver involved in the operation were martyred,” said a statement by Chhattisgarh police.
The Union home minister Amit Shah spoke to Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel about the attack and promised all possible help to the state government. “Anguished by the cowardly attack on the Chhattisgarh police at Dantewada. Have spoken to Chhattisgarh’s Chief Minister and assured all possible assistance to the state government. My condolences to the bereaved family members of the martyred Jawans,” he tweeted.
In a tweet, Baghel called the attack saddening and said the fight against Maoists was in its last stage and that the Left-wing insurgents would not be spared. He added the police personnel were attacked when they arrived for an operation based on a tip-off about the presence of Maoists under the Aranpur police station of Dantewada.
Wednesday’s attack was the worst in Chhattisgarh since April 2021 when 22 police and paramilitary personnel were killed and at least two dozen others injured in a gunfight with Maoists in the Bastar region.
The deceased policemen belonged to the District Reserve Guard (DRG), a special force of the Chhattisgarh police that comprises mostly local tribals who have been trained to combat Maoists. The DRG has been instrumental in several successful operations against the rebels in Bastar, a hotbed of left-wing extremism.
The DRG team was returning after conducting an anti-Maoist operation when the attack happened. The special security forces tasked with combating Maoists are looking for the attackers, who have disappeared in the jungle, sources said, adding the area is a tri-junction of three states. IG Bastar, P Sundarraj said the bodies of 10 DRG jawans and one civilian driver who lost their lives in the Naxal attack are being evacuated from the spot.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and other leaders condemned the Naxal attack in Dantewada and paid tribute to jawans who lost their lives.
The Maoist attack appears to be a desperate attempt to assert control in the area as they are already in a retreat due to intense and consistent operations by the security forces, which have achieved a string of successes against the Maoists in recent times.
Over 400 Maoists have been surrendering every year following the government’s rehabilitation policy, Sundarraj P, Inspector General of Police of Bastar range, said. He said most of the Maoist leaders left now are usually from states outside Chhattisgarh such as Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
Wednesday’s attack came a week after Maoists fired at the convoy of a Congress MLA in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur while he was returning from a public meeting. No one was injured in the attack. The Congress MLA, Vikram Mandavi, was travelling with panchayat member Parvati Kashyap when the Maoists shot at their convoy.
The toll was the heaviest for security forces fighting Maoists since 2017 when 25 jawans were killed in an attack. Seventeen personnel from a commando patrol were killed in an attack in Chhattisgarh in March 2020.
In 2013, Maoists felled trees to block a 20-car convoy of Congress leaders in a dense forest in Chhattisgarh before detonating a landmine and firing on the vehicles. Former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla and 18 others were killed in the attack.
The fresh attack in Dantewada came months after seven security personnel, including an army jawan, were killed in suspected Maoist attacks across Chhattisgarh over one week in February.
The attacks came even as the Union government maintained there has been a decline in Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) violence. In January, Shah said they aim to make the country free from Maoism before the 2024 general elections. In December, Union minister of state for home Nityanand Rai told Parliament that incidents of LWE violence reduced by 77% from a high of 2213 in 2010 to 509 in 2021.
In February, Shah chaired a meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee on LWE and cited a three-pronged strategy as the reason for the dip in Maoist-related incidents. He said the number of civilian and security personnel killed in LWE incidents declined to 98 in 2022 from 1,005 in 2010 while the number of districts affected dropped from 90 to 45.
The Maoists, also known as Naxals, have waged an armed insurgency against the government that has killed hundreds of people over six decades. They say they are fighting on behalf of the poorest, who have been left out of the country’s economic boom. Since 1967 the group seen as the greatest threat to the country’s internal security have asserted control over vast swathes of land in central and eastern India, establishing a so-called “red corridor.” They operate from thick forests and their operations against the Indian administration and forces are shrouded in secrecy.
A few days ago, Naxals in Chhattisgarh had in a letter threatened to attack the security forces, who, they claimed, were exploiting the locals and creating problems for them. Clearly, the attack on CRPF personnel on the Aranpur road in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh on Wednesday showed that the warning was ignored and no Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was followed in the combing operation.