22 INDIAN SECURITY PERSONNEL KILLED, 30 INJURED IN MAOIST AMBUSH

Sun 04 April 2021:

As many as 22 Indian security forces personnel were killed and 30 others injured on Saturday in an encounter with armed Maoists in a forest along the border between Bijapur and Sukma districts in Chhattisgarh, police officials said.

Indian Express has reported the Bijapur Superintendent of Police as having confirmed that 17 bodies were recovered on the morning on April 4, which added to toll of five who were announced to have been killed a day before.

Eighteen personnel were missing after five security personnel were killed and 30 others were injured. “On Sunday, bodies of 17 missing personnel were recovered during a search operation. With this, total 22 personnel have been killed in the gunfight,” a senior police official told PTI.

The bodies of three jawans who were reported killed on Saturday were also recovered, he said, adding that the search operation was still on in the forest.

Some weapons of the security forces were also missing, the official said.

The death toll was the worst for Indian security forces battling the far-left guerrillas since 2017.

Decades-old conflict

The Maoist rebels, inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, have been fighting the Indian government for more than 40 years, in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people.

More than 10,000 have been killed since the year 2000, according to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal.

The rebels claim to defend the rights of indigenous tribes and other marginalised groups, while the government calls them India’s biggest internal security threat.

The Maoists, also known as Naxalites because their left-wing rebellion began in 1967 in the Naxalbari village of the eastern West Bengal state, have ambushed police, destroyed government offices and abducted officials.

They have also blown up train tracks, attacked prisons to free their comrades and stolen weapons from police and paramilitary warehouses to arm themselves.

Last month, a roadside bomb killed at least four policemen and wounded 14 in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh state as they were returning from an anti-Maoist operation.