Police casualties in Maoist violence shoots up in Chhattisgarh

By IANS

Raipur : Police casualties in Maoist-related violence in Chhattisgarh increased in 2007 as 200 police personnel were killed, a senior police officer said Tuesday.


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“Chhattisgarh recorded 436 deaths in Maoist-related violence in 2007, as against 458 casualties reported in 2006. But the deaths of policemen and special police officers (SPOs) shot up to 200 last year, while that number was 74 in 2006,” Girdhari Nayak, Inspector General (Maoist Operations) told IANS.

Forty-eight policemen and SPOs had been killed in 2005, he said.

“In 2006, 39 policemen, including paramilitary force personnel and 35 SPOs were killed in Maoist violence, while 125 policemen and paramilitary troopers were killed besides 75 SPOs in 2007,” Nayak informed.

He, however, said the state has witnessed a substantial drop in civilian casualties last year with 165 deaths, as against 306 deaths in 2006 and 126 the previous year.

According to official data, 67 Maoists were killed in the state in 2007, while the figure was 73 in 2006 and 27 in 2005. The state reported one death of an SPO in 2005, rising to 35 in 2006 and 75 in 2007.

Nayak said that police have recovered huge caches of arms and ammunition from Maoists in 2007 including 96 weapons, 175 landmines, 208 detonators, 49 gelatine sticks, five wireless sets, five magazines and seven claymore mines.

The year 2007 also saw a major Maoist attack when 55 policemen, including 39 SPOs, were killed March 15 at Rani Bodli police post in Bijapur district.

Then on Dec 16, the insurgents successfully executed a jailbreak in Dantewada, in which 299 inmates including some 100 Maoists escaped.

Maoists run a parallel government in the forested interiors of the state’s southern mineral rich Bastar region, which comprises five districts spread over 40,000 sq km.

Maoist-related violence has increased since June 2005 when a civil militia movement called “Salwa Judum” was launched with direct arms and monetary support from the state government.

The violence has now forced more than 50,000 people, mostly tribals, to desert their ancestral villages and settle in 23 government-run relief camps in Dantewada and Bijapur districts.

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