RAIPUR: When caught in a crossfire between the security forces and the outlawed CPI (Maoist) in the forested terrain of Nilavaya in the virtual war zone of Dantewada, how apprehensive and endangered a civilian could feel is aptly reflected in a video created by one of the trapped members of the Doordarshan team on Tuesday.
Lighting assistant Mormukut Sharma recorded a message for his mother on his smartphone expressing the fear that he might not survive. In the mobile phone clipping, that has gone viral a day after the rebel attack, Sharma said that he was not afraid of death that seems so close with the bullets flying everywhere, even as in the background the sound of exchange of fire between the rebels and the forces could be heard.
Telling his mother about the terror attack and how his team and the security forces were ambushed by the Maoists while going for the election coverage assignment in Dantewada, he said, “I love you a lot ma. Perhaps I may not survive the attack. The situation is very precarious. But don't know why in-spite of facing death, I don't feel scared. But it’s impossible that we will come out of this alive.”
He said despite the fact that they were accompanied by six or seven security personnel they were trapped in an ambush. As he lay there with the bullets flying around and feeling apprehensive about his own survival, he commented that he was thirsty.
In the video Sharma can be seen asking for water from a security personnel, who passed by him during the ongoing gunfight and was advised to lie prone on the ground in a ditch behind a tree till the situation turned safe.
DD reporter Dhiraj Kumar and Sharma miraculously survived the Maoist attack while their colleague and a cameraman Achyutanand Sahoo was killed.