By IANS
Raipur : About 200 armed Maoist rebels, a majority of them women, clad in paramilitary force fatigues shot dead five special police officers (SPOs) and critically wounded three others Monday in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district.
The Maoists were wearing the uniform of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) when they attacked the SPOs at Pamulvaya village, about 500 km south of Raipur and seven km from Bijapur town, the district headquarters.
“We have five casualties, all SPOs,” Ratanlal Dangi, the Bijapur district superintendent of police, told IANS by telephone.
The injured were rushed to a government hospital in Bijapur and then taken to to Raipur by air for medical treatment.
SPOs are youths recruited from the local tribal population to assist the police in the campaign against Maoists.
The fighting erupted Monday when a joint patrol of the CRPF, police and SPOs went to the village and were attacked by the armed leftwing radicals.
Dangi claimed that police had inflicted heavy injuries on the rebels but was unable to give a count.
The CRPF and state police have started a search for the attackers.
Meanwhile, security has been beefed up in the Bastar region ahead of the Oct 30 strike called by the rebels against the government’s move to allow state-owned Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) to mine the iron-ore-rich Rowghat hills in Bastar.
“Extra policemen have been deployed near government installations and key buildings in the Maoist-dominated forested interiors of southern Bastar region to deal with any situation Tuesday,” Pawan Dev, deputy inspector general (DIG) of police deployed in Bastar, told IANS on phone.
Maoists have been running a parallel government of sorts in the hilly and forested interiors of Bastar, spread out in an area of about 40,000 sq km.