Areesh
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RAIPUR/NEW DELHI: Four jawans of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were killed and three severely injured in a Maoist ambush in south Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district on Wednesday morning. The Maoists attacked when a team of CRPF personnel were preparing to leave with medicines, clothes and toys for villagers in Bijapur's Nukanpal area as part of the civic action programme (CAP) of the force.
Around 9.30am, CRPF jawans were sanitizing the road through Murkinar and Cheramangi which the force's CAP team would take to travel to Nukanpal. This was an announced programme and CRPF teams have travelled to these villages in the past for such outreach initiatives.
A senior CRPF officer said, "Villagers welcomed our civic action programmes and were gradually turning away from the Maoists. Obviously, Maoists would be against these initiatives and would try to derail them."
About 150 Maoists had laid an ambush and fired indiscriminately as the CRPF's road opening party came out to sanitize the stretch. Four CRPF men of Battalion 168 — Amitabh Mishra from West Bengal, Madan Lal from MP, Diganta Bayan of Assam and Dilip Kumar from UP — were killed. As soon as the other CRPF men took position to retaliate, the Maoists triggered a series of landmine blasts injuring several CRPF personnel, said a senior police officer.
Reinforcement from a CRPF camp, about 5km away from the spot, reached. For about an hour, there was pitched battle till the Maoists retreated. There are reports of several Maoists killed in the encounter, said RK Vij, additional director-general of Chhattisgarh police. However, no bodies were found.
The Maoists managed to escape with two Insas rifles and one AK-47 from the CRPF men they killed.
Maoists are observing martyrs' week from November 24-30 due to which trains have stopped running in Dantewada area at night. The only passenger train from Kirandul was also cancelled for the week. Due to the Maoist threat, movement of goods trains between 7 pm and 6 am has been stopped from Dantewada to Kirandul, said a railway official.
4 CRPF jawans killed, 3 injured in Chhattisgarh Maoist ambush - The Times of India