By IANS,
Raipur: Ten police personnel, including an additional superintendent of police, are missing since Monday afternoon after Maoists ambushed their vehicle at a thickly forested area along the Chhattisgarh-Orissa border, police said Tuesday.”We are still bracketing the policemen as ‘missing’. Last night, we could not reach the attack site as it was densely forested. A strong police contingent has been dispatched to the site early morning, but we can’t confirm the number of casualties till we recover the bodies,” Additional Director General of Police Giridhari Nayak told IANS.
The guerrilla attack has stunned the police department as it is the first Maoist ambush in Raipur district, along the state’s border with Orissa. The Maoist violence was till now confined mainly to Chhattisgarh’s southern tip of Bastar region.
When asked to comment about TV reports saying that all the 10 Chhattisgarh policemen were killed in the attack, Nayak said: “I can’t go by TV reports, we will confirm the casualties only when our men reach the spot.”
He said that Maoists ambushed the 10-member police search squad, led by Additional Superintendent of Police Rajesh Pawar, when they were returning in a tractor to Gariaband in Raipur district from the Orissa border.
“The police team had gone to the Orissa border in a Bolero vehicle after they received information that two Maoists had surrendered, but the vehicle developed some technical snag and the police team hired a tractor,” he said.
Chief Minister Raman Singh has ordered top officials to launch a search operation.