C’garh: 3 more bodies of Maoists recovered, death toll mounts to 13

Raipur: Three more bodies of Maoists were on Wednesday recovered in the forested village of Lendra in Bijapur district under Bastar in Chhattisgarh where an encounter between the ultras and security forces had taken place a day ago, police said.

With this, the death toll of Maoists in the incident mounted to 13.

Security forces had recovered bodies of ten Maoists in the forest of Lendra after the eight-hour-long encounter with the rebels ended on Tuesday.

Three more bodies of Maoists were recovered during a search operation in the area by security forces on Wednesday morning.

Bijapur district superintendent of police Jitendra Yadav has confirmed recovery of three more bodies at the encounter site.

A joint team comprising personnel from district reserve guard (DRG), special task force (STF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and commando battalion for resolute action (CoBRA) had launched a search operation in the area on Monday night following intelligence inputs on the presence of senior Maoist leader Papa Rao and members of company number two of people’s liberation guerrilla army (PLGA) of outlawed CPI (Maoist) in the jungle near Lendra.

A gunfight ensued between them at around six am on Tuesday when Maoists opened fire on security forces, leading to heavy casualty among the ultras.

The 13 slain Maoists were yet to be identified, police said.

Huge cache of arms and ammunition including one Light Machine Gun (LMG), several .303 and 12 bore rifles and barrel grenade launchers (BGLs) were recovered at the encounter site.

This was the biggest anti-Naxal operation in Bastar in recent times.