RAIPUR: Union home minister Amit Shah and Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel paid tributes to the security personnel gunned down at the Maoist encounter at Jagdalpur in Bastar on Monday.
Twenty-two jawans were killed in the Maoist ambush in the inhospitable terrain of an edgy district of Bijapur, south Chhattisgarh, on Saturday.
Shah reached Jagdalpur from Delhi by a special flight on Monday morning. During his eight-hour halt, he will hold a high-level meeting with the top officials of the state, police and paramilitary forces at the circuit house before proceeding to Bijapur to meet the injured personnel admitted in the district hospital. The union minister is also scheduled to visit a CRPF camp at Basaguda where he will have lunch with the jawans.
In another significant development, some journalists in south Bastar received phone calls from the Maoists claiming that the Cobra battalion jawan who had gone missing after the encounter is in their captivity.