Three security personnel were killed and 14 sustained injuries during an encounter with Maoists at a newly established police camp on the borders of the Sukma-Bijapur districts of the Bastar region on Tuesday.
An encounter was still going on at the spot and the injured jawans were being airlifted to Raipur for treatment.
As per the preliminary information, Maoists opened fire upon a newly set-up security camp at Tekulguhdam village in the worst insurgency-hit region near Jagargunda hills on the Sukma- Bijapur borders in Bastar division.
Security personnel of the CoBRA-elite unit of CRPF, Special Task Force, and District Reserve Guards were on patrol near the camp, around the Jonaguda-Aliguda region when they came under Naxal firing. The jawans retaliated the attack leading to an encounter. Maoists also triggered an IED blast and used BGL upon a security camp, police said.
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One jawan sustained a bullet injury and the other thirteen were wounded in the blast with splinter injuries, a police statement said, adding that the condition of all the personnel was out of danger.
Tekulgudam is the place where 23 security personnel were killed and 33 injured in a deadly Maoist ambush in 2021 and it took two days for police to recover the bodies of all jawans. The region is dominated and is called the native place of the dreaded Maoist commander Hidma.
Bastar range Inspector General of Police P Sundarraj said that despite the huge loss of lives of jawans in the 2021 ambush in Tekulgudam, we are trying to strongly establish peace, protection, and progress by setting up a police camp for people’s welfare. He said that our jawans are determined to eliminate the Naxal problem from its roots.
Sundarraj said that the encounter continued in Tekulgudam and further details were awaited.
In every major Maoist attack in Bastar, Hidma’s mysterious figure creeps in. Tekulguda village which has seen 26 deaths of jawans now, with 23 killed in 2021, is next to Puvarti, which is believed to be Hidma’s native village.
Carrying a bounty of Rs 45 lakh, Hidma is accused in more than 26 attacks, including the 2013 Jhiram Ghati massacre of frontline Congress leaders and the Burkapal ambush of April 2017 in which 24 CRPF personnel were martyred, but police aren’t even sure what he looks like. They just have a bundle of photos of men who could be Hidma.
All that’s known is that Hidma is perhaps 53 years old, short, and heads PLGA battalion No. 1 as well as the Maoists’ south sub-zonal command.
Also called Deva, Hidma hails from the Jagargunda area of Sukma. If there’s anyone security forces desperately want in Bastar, it is Hidma.
Among the martyred jawans were seven from CRPF’s CoBRA unit, eight personnel of District Reserve Guards, six STF, and one from Bastariya battalion. The ambush was meticulously planned as a large number of rebels first triggered blasts and opened indiscriminate fire from higher positions inflicting causalities.
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