Dr Bibhu Prasad Routray
Five security force personnel belonging to the District Reserve Guards (DRG) were killed on 23 March after suspected Left-wing extremists detonated three IEDs under a culvert in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district in the south Bastar region. Chhattisgarh is the worst LWE affected state in the country. This is the biggest attack of 2021 and came exactly a year after an encounter which had claimed the lives of 17 DRG personnel in Sukma district. On the face of it, the incident underlines the persisting threat of the extremists in the region, albeit at a much weaker state. Beneath the surface, however, are the enduring problems with the security force operations as well as the lack of adequate support from the central government. The Attack According to available details, about 90 (120, according to some other reports) DRG personnel carried out a two-day operation in Abujhmaad, spread over 4000 square kilometres in Chhattisgarh and neighbouring Maharashtra. Abujhmaad is also believed to be the bastion of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPIMaoist).
The operation, part of the Chhattisgarh police’s repeated attempts to breach the sense of safety of the extremist organization, however, did not yield any results. At the end of the operation, DRG personnel started returning to their respective camps. A bus carrying 20 DRG personnel was on its way to the district headquarter took the full impact of the explosions as it moved over a culvert. Three improvised explosive devices (IEDs), assessed to have a combined explosive weight of 40 kilogrammes, exploded tossing the bus onto the dry riverbed below. While three personnel died instantly, two more succumbed to their injuries later. About 14 others were injured, three of them critically. The fact that the explosion wasn’t followed by an ambush leads the police to believe that the IEDs were probably detonated by a couple of extremists in civilian clothes nearby.
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