In a major joint operation launched by the COBRA commandos of the CRPF, the special task force and the Chhattisgarh police, 15 Naxals belonging to the central regional command of the military wing of the CPI(Maoist) have been killed.
The operation that began four days ago concluded on Tuesday
The CRPF suspects that this group was responsible for the deadly attack that killed 25 CRPF personnel in Sukma district of Chattisgarh on may 24.
The operation began four days ago, and the special forces were on the job to hunt down the Naxals .
Success came their way as 15 Naxals have been killed, according to official sources.
Around 150 Naxals were involved in the encounter and a number of them were reportedly from the neighbouring states. There was vast display of military prowess as the red ultras wielded automatic weapons and under barrel grenade launchers. These were the weapons used by the Maoist group in the May 24 attack in Burkapal.
This time, the encounter site was less than 20 kilometres away from Burkapal giving enough clues to the forces that the CRC of the People's Liberation Gureilla Army of the CPI (Maoist) was not only active but was using villages to hide and make them soft targets.
The operations concluded on Tuesday. One jawan, Salam Upadhyay of the STF of Chattisgarh police, engaged in another encounter succumbed to injuries at Jagdalpur hospital even as two others, Satru and Suresh, suffered injuries and have been evacuated to Ramkrishna hospital in Raipur.
CRPF sources said during interactions on the sidelines of this operations, the villagers voiced their anguish over the resistance Naxals were putting up in development work. They also came handy in providing information about the area of their concentration.
"During encounter, the language being spoken was not the local dialect; most of the Naxals were from outside and not locals," said an official, explaining that the Maoists are not getting locals for recruitment and that their ideology is getting weaker even in their hinterland. The Central and state police forces, meanwhile, are satisfied with the coordination between them during the operations.
