Under threat from the Maoists, and jailed by the police, AAP's Soni Sori plunges into the election for all she holds dear. Aman Sethi reports
Nine Naxalites, including three women, were killed in an encounter with security personnel in a forest along the border of Narayanpur and Kanker districts in Chhattisgarh on Tuesday, state's Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sharma said.
An elusive figure, Hidma is a top leader of the outlawed Naxal outfit CPI (Maoist) and has been on the radar of security agencies for many years.
The Naxals are planning to enforce "poll boycott" in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls by disrupting the election process in Maoist affected states.
Acting Director General of the CRPF, Sudeep Lakhtakia said the ambush has "naturally called for the revision of standard operating procedures" in these areas.
CoBRA commando Rakeshwar Singh Manhas went missing after the April 3 ambush in Chhattisgarh's Bastar region.
The deadly Maoist ambush, claiming the lives of 14 Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district, was planned and supervised by local Naxal leaders who were reportedly camping in south Bastar for past few days, a senior police official said on Tuesday.
Besides disclosing in their affidavits, candidates have to prominently declare criminal cases they are facing, if any, thrice in newspapers in print as well on television, he said, adding that political parties too have to publish within three days of nomination why a candidate with criminal background was selected. "You (political parties) have to tell the public whether you did not get any (other) candidate and why was it necessary to select them (those with criminal background)," he said.
Three youths from Pune, who were allegedly abducted by Naxals while they were on a bicycle rally to spread the message of peace, have been released by the rebels in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district, police said.
A search operation was underway on Sunday to trace 18 security personnel who went missing after a fierce gun-battle with Naxals in a forest along the border of Bijapur-Sukma districts in Chhattisgarh, police said.
The personnel belonging to the CRPF's elite Commando Battalion for Resolute Action unit, the District Reserve Guard and the Special Task Force were involved in the operation.
'Defence, development and democracy is the formula to defeat Naxalism.'
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They said the IED blast took place in the Chintalnar forest area of the district around 9 pm on Saturday and the injured personnel were evacuated by a Mi-17 V5 helicopter of the Indian Air Force around midnight.
The new battalion, numbered 241, was named Bastariya because it included recruits from Bijapur, Dantewada, Narayanpur, and Sukma districts.
"The villagers came first, and then the Naxalites, dressed in black. They were some 300 Naxalites, all wearing black," a jawan of the Central Reserve Police Force said.
He accused Naxalites of using tribal villagers as a shield.
He was a decorated officer as he won combat competitions and participated in all-India police commando duty meets.
The commander, identified only as Podia, was on Tuesday gunned down by police in Dantewada district, 450km from Raipur, Superintendent of Police Kamlochan Kashyap told PTI.
The IMD has warned of heatwave to severe heatwave conditions in parts of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh during the next five days.
A rare video footage of Maoists purportedly showing the rebels conducting a 'commando-style' training to gun down helicopters, used to ferry security personnel and VIPs in Chhattisgarh's worst insurgency-hit Bastar region, has been recovered by the police.
In a major joint offensive, separate joint teams of security forces, comprising over 2,000 personnel, had launched an anti-Naxal operation from Bijapur and Sukma districts in the South Bastar forests, considered as the Maoist stronghold, on Friday night.
The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pinned its hopes on the old guard to ensure victory in next month's assembly elections in Chhattisgarh as it gave tickets to 11 sitting MLAs and renominated 13 leaders who lost in the 2018 polls.
Roads are of great importance to win the war against the rebels in Sukma
Four personnel were also injured in the Naxal attack and two of them were stated to be critical.
A cache of weapons was recovered from the encounter site
Naxalites blew up the mini-goods van in which the security personnel were travelling by using an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), police sources said.
With an aim of countering the 'anti-developmental' propaganda of Maoists, the Central Reserve Police Force has devised a new strategy of putting up hoardings in local dialect to seek tribals' support in construction of a National Highway in Chhattisgarh's worst insurgency-hit Sukma district.
With the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) planning to create disturbances to mark its decade of formation this September, police is bracing up to counter any such move and make people aware about the "futility" of the rebel movements.
The jawans are helping farmers in ploughing their fields
The Central Reserve Police Force on Thursday said it has ordered an inquiry into the shocking recovery of uniforms, suspected to be that of troopers martyred in a recent Naxal ambush in Chhattisgarh, in a garbage dump near a hospital in state capital Raipur.
Heavy rainfall coupled with strong winds continued to lash several parts of Chhattisgarh on Monday due to cyclone Hudhud, which hit coastal Andhra Pradesh and Odisha on Sunday.
"It is certain that the information about their movement was leaked. Somewhere or at some stage this has happened. The boys were doing a surprise non-operational movement and hence were in mufti. We are looking into it," CRPF Director General K Durga Prasad said.
Seven CRPF men were killed on Wednesday and their weapons looted after Naxals carried out a deadly landmine blast on their vehicle in the jungles of the worst Naxal-affected Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh.
The Maoists squad 'very discreetly with the aid of locals' kept tracking the movement of the troops when one party of 36, out of the total three, sat down for launch, the strong squad of Naxals, possessing sophisticated weapons, took them by surprise.
Thirteen Central Reserve Police Force personnel, including two officers were killed in a Maoist attack in the Chintagufa area in Chhattisgarh's Sukhma while they were on an area domination exercise. According to reports, the attackers used locals as human shields to prevent CRPF retaliation.
Three Naxals were arrested on Tuesday and a cache of arms, ammunition and electronic gadgets seized after security forces busted a Maoist transit camp in Chhattisgarh's Kanker district, the police said.
The enhanced allowance will be applicable to all paramilitary personnel deployed in Jammu and Kashmir and Naxal-hit areas.
70 per cent voting was recorded across 18 constituencies of Bastar and Rajnandgaon till 3 pm in the first phase of assembly election in Chhattisgarh, where violence by Naxals who have called for a poll boycott left a Central Reserve Police Force jawan dead.
An AK-47 rifle, one SLR, three Insas rifles and a .303 rifle were also recovered from the encounter spot.
