Pregnant tribal stuck as Naxals dig up roads in Chhattisgarh's Bastar
Woman, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, could not be evacuated from a makeshift medical facility.
Raipur: The day-long bandh called by Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s conflict zone of Bastar on Friday, apparently to protest an alleged move by the Centre to deploy combat choppers against them, found its victim in a pregnant tribal woman.
The woman, who was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, could not be evacuated from a makeshift medical facility opened in a CRPF camp in Chintalnar in south Bastar district of Sukma for admission in a nearby government hospital despite best efforts by security forces, thanks to the Naxals who dug up the road at many places along the route.
“The woman who showed signs of pregnancy-related complications checked into the CRPF camp at Chintalnar on afternoon Thursday. Doctors in the camp referred her to the government hospital at Dornapal, 35 km away. We tried to evacuate her by a chopper. However, that could not be materialise due to logistic problems. Then we tried to evacuate her by road. We travelled up to our Burkhapal camp, 7 km away, by somehow dodging the damaged patches in the road, but had to return to Chintalnar when we could not move ahead,” commandant of 74th battalion of CRPF Firoze Kuzur, posted at Dornapal, told this newspaper. The tribal woman, who needed urgent and better medical attention, has thus been stranded in the CRPF camp at Chintalnar for almost two days.
Incidentally, another pregnant tribal in the locality had to be airlifted for admission to a nearby hospital in similar circumstances a couple of months ago.
In another incident, security forces averted a major tragedy by recovering an improvised explosive device planted by Naxals close to a temple at Konta in the district on Friday.