Jungles of Chhattisgarh drenched in red

Under a muted October sky, 31 bodies of alleged Naxals lie in the open in Karli police lines, a sprawling campus in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada town, in the district of the same name.

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They were gunned down a day ago by security forces in what has been the biggest anti-Naxal operation in the Maoist-affected State, since Chhattisgarh's creation in 2000. The police would later revise the estimate of the number of dead to 38, based on a Naxal statement.

For a scene that reeks of death, there is a strange upbeat chaos: policemen high-five each other, journalists quiz them, there are some clipped voices about the possibility of rain. As the day progresses, the stench gets stronger because the bodies lie in the open. Many of the facilities in the Karli police complex are named after policemen who were killed by Naxals. Now, it is the scene of photo ops with the bodies. From the 1960s, forest-dwelling marginalised communities, mostly tribal, have waged an armed struggle against the state, in a communist-led separatist movement that originated in West Bengal.A policeman says blithely, “Is se bhi bada karenge (We will go even bigger the next time).” This operation was conducted near Thulthuli and Gawadi villages in adjoining Narayanpur district. Here, phone networks are sketchy and only dirt tracks through dense jungles lead to the villages.