Major gun battle between Maoists, security forces underway at Chhattisgarh's Indravati National Park
A major encounter broke out on Thursday morning between security forces and Maoists at the Indravati National Park in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district.
The ongoing encounter started after a joint team of security forces undertook an operation based on specific intelligence about the presence of senior Maoist cadres in the area.
This comes nearly a fortnight after Nambala Keshava Rao, alias Basava Raju, the general secretary of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), was gunned down in an encounter along with 27 others in the jungles of Abujhmad region in Narayanpur district on May 21.
Indravati National Park has seen two other major encounters this year between Maoists and security forces. On February 9, two security forces personnel and 31 Maoists were killed in an encounter at the national park. Before that, on January 12, five Maoists, including two women, were killed in an encounter with security forces.
Back in August 2023, sources in the security forces had told The Indian Express that Maoists were recruiting new cadres in the national park, Abujhmad, and the Kanker-Narayapur inter-district border near Maharashtra. The fresh recruits are also being trained in the national park, the sources had said, adding that they had been using drones to track security forces.
Security forces have since been trying to free the national park area of Maoists. Also, they want to build a bridge over the Indravati river that would connect the two states and help boost economic activities.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has set a deadline of March 2026 to eradicate Left Wing Extremism (LWE) from India. The security forces this year till date have 202 Maoists, of which 185 were in Bastar region alone — Bijapur is a part of Bastar region. This year has also seen the death of 17 security personnel in attacks by Maoists.
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