Thirty-one suspected Maoists were killed on Friday in a security operation in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar, the police said.
The operation is still on, the security forces said on Saturday.
This reportedly marked the deadliest such operation in Chhattisgarh’s 24-year history. The state was carved out of Madhya Pradesh in 2000.
The suspected militants were reportedly gunned down in an encounter with security forces in Abujhmad, a 6,000 sq km uncharted forest near the state’s border with Maharashtra. The area is a stronghold of Maoist militants.
As Malini Subramaniam reported in Scroll since July, while many of those killed in Bastar this year have been declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute this. They said that the persons killed were civilians.
According to the Bastar Police, the gunfight on Friday began around 1 pm along the border between Narayanpur and Dantewada districts, near the villages of Govel, Nendur and Thulthuli, The Indian Express reported.
“Acting on the information [intelligence reports], a team of District Reserve Guards of Dantewada and Narayanpur were sent to the jungle for an anti-Naxal operation on Thursday night,” an unidentified officer told the newspaper.
The Districts Reserve Guards is a specialised unit comprising former Maoist militants who have laid down arms.
The bodies of the suspected Maoists who were killed on Friday are yet to be identified. More details about the encounter were not known as the security personnel had yet to return from the jungle, an official said.
In a statement released Friday afternoon, the police said that a cache of weapons, including an AK-47 rifle and a self-loading rifle, was recovered from the site of the gunfight.
This brings the total number of suspected Maoists killed in the state this year to 188. At least 15 security personnel and 47 civilians were also killed, reported The Indian Express.
Also read:
- Dead ‘Maoist’ talking: The aftermath of a security operation in Chhattisgarh
- This child soldier was killed in an anti-Maoist operation in Bastar. She was not the only one
- Rs 5 crore bounty: Are rewards making anti-Maoist operations more deadly?
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