A party of 45th battalion of the ITBP Tuesday had left the Chhotedongar police station for ROP duty when around 10am, they were ambushed by the Maoists
A security personnel died while another was injured in a Maoist ambush in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district on Tuesday. The Indo-Tibetan Border Patrol (ITBP) personnel were part of a Road-opening party for the visit of local Congress MLA Chandan Kashyap.
A party of 45th battalion of the ITBP Tuesday had left the Chhotedongar police station for ROP duty when around 10am, they were ambushed by the Maoists. According to senior officials, the rebels were hiding near the hills in the Amdai Ghati and started firing on the personnel. “The ITBP party retaliated and a jawan was killed and another injured in cross-firing,” Bastar IG P Sundarraj confirmed.
The deceased has been identified as Shiv Kumar Meena from Rajasthan while the injured personnel was identified as Keshav Singh, who sustained injuries and is now out of danger.
MLA Chandan Kashyap, who was supposed to travel through the area, sourced a helicopter and didn’t travel via road.
Maoists had attacked an iron ore mining site in the same area earlier this month, killing the supervisor of a private firm, torching six heavy vehicles and briefly holding 13 other employees hostage.
In a separate incident, almost 300km away, 34 people from a village in Sukma district were taken hostage by the Maoists. According to senior officers, the incident is from Kunded village in Konta block of Sukma, 5km from Jagargunda. “People started disappearing from July 17 in three batches, and are homogenously distributed across all paras of the village. It is of concern that those who have gone, haven’t come back, as Maoists generally release people after conducting their meetings or other business,” said a senior officer.
The group of 34 people include school students, teachers and a salesperson from the village among farmers, police said. “We are trying to track these people and trying to assure their safe release,” the senior officer said.
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