RAIPUR: Five Maoists, including two women, were gunned down in an encounter with security forces in Bijapur district of Bastar on Sunday, not far from where an IED blast killed eight policemen and a civilian driver six days ago.
Fourteen Maoists have been neutralized in the first 12 days of the year.
Bijapur SP Jitendra Yadav said that during an anti-Maoist search operation on Jan 11, security forces received intelligence about the presence of Maoists in Bandapara-Koranjed forests in Madded area of the National Park region of Bijapur (around 450km from Raipur).
On the basis if this information, joint forces from District Reserve Guard (DRG), Special Task Force (STF) and District Force set out to intercept the Maoists, Bastar Range IG P Sundarraj said.
The gunfight broke out on Sunday morning in a forest in the Indravati National Park area. Intermittent exchanges of fire went on till around 3-4pm. When the guns fell silent, security personnel recovered bodies of five uniformed Maoists.
An SLR, two rifles, a 12-bore gun, a grenade launcher, countrymade guns and explosives were seized from the site of battle.
The Maoists will be identified once troops return to base. Police said that search operations continue in the region. This region is not far from Kutru, 450km from Raipur, where a 70kg IED blew up nine people, including eight security personnel.
Security forces have kept up the pressure on Maoists this year too after neutralizing 222 Maoists in 2024. There have been at least three major encounters in Gariaband, Abujhmarh and Sukma this month where 14 Maoists, including four women, were killed. A jawan was shot dead in the Abujhmarh encounter and eight policemen were killed in an IED blast in Bijapur on Jan 6. Two villagers have died and four injured in Maoist IED blasts.
