C’garh: 5 Maoists Gunned Down in Bastar, Huge Cache of Weapons, Explosives Recovered
Raipur: At least five Maoists including two women were on Sunday gunned down in an encounter with security forces in Bijapur district in south Bastar of Chhattisgarh.
The encounter took place in the Bandepara- Koranjend forest under Madded area in Bijapur district in the morning, police said.
The death toll of Maoists may go up as the search operation still continued till the last reports came at around seven in the evening.
At least one of the five slain ultras, whose bodies have been recovered by the security forces, was a top-level cadre of Naxals, a senior district police officer indicated to this newspaper while citing the recovery of automatic weapons at the encounter site.
“Five Maoists including two women were killed in an encounter with security forces in Bandepara -Koranjend forest. The search operation still continued. Details regarding the encounter would be known after the anti-Naxal operation ends”, Bastar range inspector general of police P Sunderraj said.
Bodies of the five slain Maoists along with a huge cache of weapons and explosives were recovered at the encounter site, he said.
The weapons recovered included one self-loaded rifle (SLR), one 12 bore rifle, two single shot rifles, one Barrel Grenade Launcher (BGL), and one country-made gun.
Acting on specific intelligence inputs on the presence of some senior Maoist leaders in the rank of divisional committee (DVC) members of National Park Area Committee of the outlawed CPI (Maoist) in the forest, a search operation involving security personnel was launched in the area, police said.
A DVC member carried a bounty of Rs eight lakh.
The search party came under attack by the armed Leftwing insurgents in the particular forest in the morning, leading to a fierce gunbattle between them.
This was the second major counterinsurgency operation launched in south Bastar districts of Bijapur and Sukma in a span of three days after Maoists killed eight district reserve guard (DRG) jawans and a civilian driver by blowing up their vehicle in an improvised explosive device (IED) explosion on January six.
On January ten, three Maoists were killed on the borders of Sukma and Bijapur districts in an encounter with security forces.
With the encounter death of three Maoists in Bijapur district on Sunday, the number of slain Naxals in Bastar since January one, 2024 has increased to 227.
