By IANS
Raipur : Maoists killed at least five special police officers (SPOs) and injured three in a gun battle in Chhattisgarh’s southern Bijapur district, even as security was beefed up in Bastar region ahead of the Oct 30 strike called by the rebels.
“We have five casualties, all SPOs,” Ratanlal Dangi, the Bijapur district superintendent of police, told IANS by telephone from Pamulvaya village, about 500 km south of Raipur.
Dangi said two SPOs and a police constable received bullet injuries in the battle that began in the morning. The injured have been rushed to a government hospital in Bijapur.
SPOs are youths recruited from the local tribal population to assist the police in the campaign against Maoists.
The fighting erupted Monday morning when a joint patrol of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the police and SPOs went to the village and were attacked by about 200 heavily armed leftwing radicals.
Meanwhile, thousands of policemen were relocated and deployed at strategic locations in the interiors of Chhattisgarh’s southern Bastar region ahead the strike called by Maoists.
“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.
“Patrolling has been intensified and police have been put on high alert with sufficient numbers of cops pumped in interiors to counter the Maoist strike,” he said.
Maoists have been running a parallel government of sorts in hilly interiors of Bastar, spread out in about 40,000 sq km.
Dev said that police had recovered Maoist leaflets Sunday, calling a strike Tuesday in protest 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.
Rowghat is located in a forested stretch of Narayanpur district and has an estimated 500 million tonnes of fine quality iron ore deposits. SAIL, the railway ministry and the state government will soon sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for laying rail tracks to allow SAIL’s flagship unit Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) to mine iron ore.
Maoists have appealed people through banners, posters and leaflets to protest the government’s “meaningless industrialisation at the cost of the local impoverished tribal community”.
They have said mining in Rowghat for SAIL will displace tribals from their native hamlets.
The Maoists have also criticised special economic zone (SEZ) projects in various parts of the country and asked people, mainly tribals, to “strongly oppose the government’s blind industrialisation move that will drive out thousands of impoverished families from their native forested lands”.