SECURITY forces yesterday launched a manhunt in India’s central Chattisgarh province for Maoist rebels who gunned down 26 federal paramilitaries in a jungle ambush, the third such attack in the region in as many months.
A patrol of about 65 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) checking the road for mines and improvised explosive devices in Narayanpur district, 300km (186 miles) south of the state capital Raipur, came under fire from some 200 Maoist rebels on a nearby hilltop on Tuesday evening. The rebels fled when reinforcements arrived.
Counterinsurgency experts criticised the “amateurishness” of the CRPF patrol for not having receded the hilltop from where the gunfire emanated in a region awash with Maoists.
“All areas in the jungle, especially those at a height, from where any patrol can be fired upon, must be secured,” said retired Brig B K Ponwar who heads the army’s jungle warfare centre in Chattisgarh that trains paramilitaries in counterinsurgency operations.
Maoist rebels, who claim inspiration from the Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong in their armed struggle against what they say is the corrupt, insensitive and inefficient Indian state, had massacred 76 CRPF men at a nearby spot in a similar ambush in April. And last month, they killed 24 civilians and 11 policemen by bombing their bus in the same vicinity.
The government launched a major offensive in November against the rebels involving over 60,000 paramilitaries but since then the Maoists have hit back triggering widespread criticism of the state and federal governments in tackling what prime minister Manmohan Singh has called India’s “biggest internal security threat”.