Forces raid Maoist camp in Bastar, gun down 5

RAIPUR: Security forces stormed a Maoist training camp deep in the jungles of Narayanpur district of Bastar in Chhattisgarh and gunned down five rebels early Saturday morning. Two jawans of District Reserve Guard (DRG) were injured in the gunbattle.


Details are sketchy as the team is yet to return to base from the remote encounter site, but security officials see this as a major success.

Twenty-one Maoists have been killed in about four weeks, seven of them women.

On Saturday’s encounter, police said that they had hard intelligence on the location of a Maoist training camp in forest of Orchha. A team of District Reserve Guards set out on Friday night. They caught sight of the rebel camp after sunrise near Dhurbeda village, about 20km from Orchha police station in Narayanpur. A gunfight broke out at 6am when the forces challenged the Maoists, say police. It lasted over one and half hours.

When the rebels stopped firing and fled the camp, the forces moved in to sanitise the area and found the bodies of five Maoists. A large cache of arms and ammunition was seized. Two DRG personnel were injured in the gunbattle. The dead Maoists haven’t been identified yet.