RAIPUR: Eight Maoists including 6 women cadres were killed in a fierce gun-battle with the security forces in the strife-torn Bijapur district, close to the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border, on Friday.
The gunfight occurred in the remote inhospitable forested terrain of Irmidi some 13 km away from the Telangana border and about 400 km south of Raipur.
“We had definite inputs about the heavy presence of Maoists in the region. A joint team of special task force (STF), district reserve guards (DRG), CRPF from Chhattisgarh and the Telangana’s Grey Hound left on the search operation.
Finding the security forces close to their location, the naxals opened fire which was swiftly retaliated by forces leading to a fierce encounter. We have recovered eight bodies of Maoists”, the Bastar range inspector general of police Vivekanand Sinha told the New Indian Express.
Though it was the joint operation involving forces from the two states, the actual exchange of fire took place between the Grey Hound troopers and the Naxalites, TNIE has learnt from the highly placed sources.
According to the IG there is no information about any injury sustained by the forces. The search operations have been intensified in the area. The bodies of the Naxalites, airlifted by IAF chopper, were yet to be identified.
The troopers have also recovered various arms and ammunition including one Self-loading Rifle (SLR), 4 Single Barrel Breach Loading (SBBL) guns, one 303 rifle, 6 rocket launchers, HE 36 grenades-3, 10 kit bags, literatures and 4 pairs of olive green uniforms of rebels from the encounter site.
"It was a successful joint operation. Going by the arms recovered we believe senior Maoist leaders might also have been killed in the gunfight", Special DG (anti-Maoist operation) D M Awasthi claimed.
Early this week 39 Maoists were killed in two separate anti-naxal operations at Gadchiroli in Maharashtra.
Ahead of the PM Narendra Modi's visit to the strife-torn Bijapur on April 14, the outlawed CPI (Maoist) in their protest had desperately attempted to register their presence through violence, setting vehicles on fire and triggering Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blasts.
Bijapur is among the seven districts in the conflict zone of Bastar that figure among the country's 30 worst
Maoist-affected districts cited by the ministry of home affairs (MHA).