The jawans killed on Monday when Maoists blew up an Anti-Landmine Vehicle of the Chhattisgarh police in Dantewada district were identified as constable
Jaiprakash Paswan and Alluddin of the Chhattisgarh ArAF’s 17th Battalion, auxillary constable Lallu Pradhan, constable Shiva Kashyap and Bashidhar Yadav of the district police. Constable Santosh, Rahul , Sandip, Shashikant, Nagendra Yadav, Devanand Roy and Bhushan were injured.
The bodies were taken to Jagdalpur and the injured jawans were airlifted to Raipur for treatment. The Maoists killed seven STF jawans in Sukma district on Saturday and gunned down a BSF constable in Kanker district on Sunday. An injured jawan, who was brought to NMDC hospital in Kirandul, told a reporter that his team was going to Kirandul to buy rations and only 12 of them were in the vehicle without any back-up or road opening party. However, Dantewada SP Kamlochan Kashyap denied that the jawans were out to fetch rations.
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Area-domination exercise “It was an area-domination exercise and a parallel search party was moving on foot. The jawans belonged to the Cholnar camp which has been set up recently and is still under construction. The blast was followed by indiscriminate firing by Maoists. I reached the spot within halfan- hour of the incident. Until then the injured jawans were fighting bravely with the ultras,” Mr. Kashyap told The Hindu. “Most of the casualties took place in the blast and around 60 to 70 Maoists carried out the attack. “However, they could not take away any of our weapons,” he added.