Express News Service
RAIPUR: The military commission of the outlawed CPI (Maoist), in its latest report on incidents from December 2020 to September 2021, has admitted that security forces inflicted severe losses on its cadres. The banned organisation revealed of having lost 116 cadres across the country, of which 78 were in the Dandakaranya region of Bastar, followed by 10 in Bihar-Jharkhand, 12 in Andhra Odisha Border (AOB), seven in MMC (Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh), six in Telangana and four in Odhisa. The report doesn’t incorporate the 26 Maoists killed in the recent encounter in Maharasthra’s Gadchiroli.
The fatalities included 34 women rebel fighters and 36 trained armed cadres of military wing Peoples’ Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) of the Maoists. The banned outfit during the given period also lost its five key Central Committee members — Purnendu Shekhar Mukherjee, Akki Raju Hargopal, Narendra Singh,Yapa Narayan alias Haribhushan and Katti Mohan Rao. The report cited that these hardcore senior members died owing to serious ailments.
“The casualty data released by the Maoists differs from ours and this difference is owing to the fact that we count the dead only after having recovered the bodies. It’s the usual practice of the Red brigade to carry with them the bodies of their comrades or injured cadres during gunfights to preempt the possibility of the forces laying hold of Naxal bodies,” said Sundarraj P, Inspector General of Police (Bastar zone).
The official figure of Maoist bodies recovered, as divulged by the Bastar Police, during the past one year is 46. The Chhattisgarh Police usually takes the assistance of surrendered Maoists to identify the dead rebels. The just released description by the Maoists further stated that during the given 10 months they carried out around 300 guerrilla operations in which 66 security personnel were killed and 85 got injured. The rebels had also killed 40 persons (civilians) accusing them either as police informers or anti-people. They also claimed to have looted 15 modern weapons and thousands of ammunition (bullets) from the forces.
