RAIPUR: Two women cadres of the outlawed CPI (Maoist) were gunned down in an encounter with security forces at Abujmaad area in Narayanpur district in Bastar about 350 km south of Raipur on Wednesday.
“On a tip-off about the presence of Maoists, a combined team of special task force (STF) and specially-trained district reserve guard (DRG) carried out a search operation. The rebels opened fire near Hasnar, about 15 km from Orcha police station, leading to a gunfight. In the retaliatory attack, two women Maoists were killed by the forces. A temporary Maoist camp in the area was also destroyed,” the Narayanpur superintendent of police Santosh Singh told the New Indian Express.
There was no report of any injury sustained by the forces, the SP said. Some ammunition, rifles, items of daily use, a sewing machine and literature were recovered from the site. “It was the second successive successful operation following specific intelligence inputs. A day before, in a joint operation, a Naxal deputy platoon commander was killed at Kamteda village about 140 km from Kanker. Today, the troopers recovered eight improvised explosive devices (IEDs) packed in a heavy trunk that were destroyed on the spot. The remaining Maoists fled to the nearby jungle”, Kanker deputy inspector general of police Ratan Lal Dangi told the New Indian Express.
On Sunday, the forces killed three Maoists including two women (a local area committee secretary and LOS member) in a gunfight at Aundhi in the Maoist-affected Rajnandgaon district.
In a separate incident, a deputy commander of Maoist was arrested by the police in the strife-torn Bijapur district on Wednesday. Bijapur district police chief KL Dhruv said that the commander, identified as Rakesh Sodhi, was carrying explosives and was taken into custody during the area domination operation carried out by the security forces near Avapalli.
The rebels killed a former janpad panchayat member and a Congress leader Channuram Mandavi (55) suspecting him to be a police informer in Dantewada on Monday late night. Maoists are present in at least 16 out of 27 districts of Chhattisgarh, but are the most active in south Chhattisgarh’s Bastar. Narayanpur, Bijapur and Dantewada are among the seven districts of Bastar zone worst affected by Maoist violence.