Raipur: The security forces on Thursday gunned down nearly seven Maoists in an encounter in south Abujhmad under Narayanpur district in Bastar. The encounter comes just days ahead of Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s visit to the Leftwing extremism-hit region.
Shah is scheduled to visit Bastar on December 15 and will likely spend a night at a security camp in Maoist hotbed to interact with the jawans.
Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai in his post on X, said, “An anti-Naxal operation was going on in which our security forces succeeded in killing seven Naxals. I salute their courage”.
A senior police officer monitoring the counterinsurgency operation said that the encounter took place at around 3 am in the forest of south Abujhmad.
“Bodies of seven Maoists have so far been recovered. Encounter and search operations were going on. More casualties among the Maoists are not ruled out”, the police officer told this newspaper requesting not to be quoted.
According to the officer, a joint team of around 1,000 security personnel, mobilised from four districts of Narayanpur, Dantewada, Kondagaon and Bastar, launched a search operation in the jungles of south Abujhmad following specific intelligence inputs on the presence of some senior Maoist leaders along with a large number of armed Maoist cadres in the area, preparing for a major attack on the forces.
The encounter took place in the forest along the borders of Narayanpur and Dantewada districts.
Security personnel drawn from the district reserve guard (DRG), the tribal counterinsurgency force of Chhattisgarh police, Special Task Force (STF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) took part in the joint search operation.
A huge cache of weapons was seized at the encounter site, police said.
This was the fourth major counterinsurgency operation in Abujhmad, a 4,000 sq km un-surveyed forested area extending from Bastar in Chhattisgarh to Gadchiroli in Maharashtra.
