Brought To Bay In Dandakaranya

HE general secretary of the proscribed CPI(Maoist), Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju, was killed in an exchange of fire with the Chhattisgarh police on May 21 in the Indravati area of Abujhmad (the unknown hills).

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Not less than 26 members of his security posse/component, widely known as CC (central committee) protection company (Company No. 7 of People's Liberation Guerrilla Army—PLGA), also got killed in the firefight, which continued for over three days. One jawan of district Narayanpur was martyred in the first burst of bullets from the Maoists. This operation was conducted exclusively by the District Reserve Guards (DRG) of Narayanpur, Bijapur, and Dantewada. The operation was planned and executed under the supervision of Prabhat Kumar, Superintendent of Police, Narayanpur, of the 2019 IPS batch.

In yet another tough operation, 31 Maoists were killed in a 21-day long joint operation conducted by the CRPF and DRG (and STF) on the steep Karregutta hills (spread over about 50 km x 10 km), which separate district Bijapur (of Chhattisgarh) from Telangana. As these hills were of great strategic importance for the Maoists, they planted a large number of IEDs (over 400 detected and diffused) to deter security forces from approaching them. The humidity was so intense that some jawans had to be evacuated by air due to exhaustion. The Superintendent of Police, Bijapur, Jitendra Yadav, from the 2018 IPS batch, demonstrated his capabilities in the successful execution of the operation and ensured proper coordination among the forces. One can gauge the importance of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) by the fact that over 50 battalions of them are deployed in Chhattisgarh, and they occupy the most forward posts.