2 weeks Ago By Rabindra Nath Choudhury
Two security personnel were on Sunday injured when a small action team (SAT) of Maoists attacked them with sharp weapons in a tribal weekly market in Jagargunda under Sukma district in south Bastar in Chhattisgarh. The attack by the Maoists, who were in civil dress, came when the two Chhattisgarh policemen were keeping vigil on movements of suspected Naxals in the Jagargunda weekly market, which functions only on a Sunday, a senior district police officer said. The SAT, considered the hitmen of Maoists comprising four-five members, fled the spot along with the service rifles of the two cops after committing the crime, the police officer said.
The injured police constables have been identified as Kartam Deva and Sodhi Kanna. They were rushed to the nearby hospital and later airlifted to Raipur for admission in a specialized private hospital. The two police constables were posted in the Jagargunda police station and they were deployed in security duty in the weekly market on Sunday when the incident took place.
The development is viewed with significance by the security establishment here since the Maoists seemed to have revived their old guerrilla warfare strategy of targeting security forces with their SATs, which proved very effective, sources said. The Maoists have revived the tactic of targeting security personnel in weekly markets in remote areas in Bastar with their SATs almost after one and half years, sources said. “Maoists have suffered major reverses at the hand of security forces in recent times particularly in Abujhmad area in south Bastar which shattered morale of their cadres.
The revival of the old tactics by Maoists to target security personnel with SATs in weekly markets in remote areas in Bastar is a ploy by them to boost sagging morale of their cadres”, N Mishra, considered an expert in the Leftwing extremism in Bastar, told this newspaper..
