Dantewada blast: Naxals put up deliberate ambush; shot 3 men

New Delhi

CRPF today said Naxals had planned a “deliberate ambush” and brutally killed seven of its troops, travelling to deliver a cooler for an ailing sniffer dog, in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada and an inquiry has been ordered to find out how the information of the “secret” movement was leaked.

Force chief K Durga Prasad said the landmine blast that took place near the Melawada village in the said district on March 30 was a “setback” for the paramilitary and they are looking at new measures and protocols to “avoid” such incidents in the future.

“However, there will be no knee-jerk reactions. We will take considered action,” he told reporters here.

The DG, who came back to the force headquarters here after a visit to the ambush spot yesterday, said the Naxals shot from a “close range” three jawans after they were thrown out of the vehicle by the impact of the blast and lay almost lifeless on the road.

“There are AK-47 bullet injuries on the bodies of three troops. We are trying to ascertain if they had breathed their last and were then shot or they were alive and subsequently shot dead,” the DG said, adding the ultras closed in on the bodies to look for weapons but the men were carrying none.

Seven Central Reserve Police Force men were killed in the deadly blast carried out by Maoists that left a massive six-feet deep crater on the road in the worst Maoist violence-affected Dantewada district of the state.

The CRPF boss said it is suspected that Naxals dug a “fox hole tunnel” from near a culvert to plant almost 40-50kgs of explosive beneath the ‘pucca’ black top road.

“Huge explosives could have been used. The vehicle split into three pieces after the blast and this is not a job of one person but an entire team of Naxal ‘dalam’ armed with weapons like AK-47 that was present in the area,” he said.

Prasad said a team of CRPF investigators who reached the spot after the blast found that the explosive was triggered from 94-metres away by joining wires as soon as the unmarked vehicle went over it.

“We have sent the electric wire used to detonate the explosives for forensic tests to understand when was it laid,” he said.

The DG, while ruling out any sabotage or leakage of information from within the force or from other security forces about the movement of these men, asserted it is certain that Naxals “definitely would have known about our movement.”

“No one was supposed to know this. But some one saw their movement and then passed on the information (to Naxals),” he said. .

Prasad said he would not like to hazard a guess from where the information was leaked as the the TATA-709 vehicle which was sent to fetch an air cooler for an ailing Belgian Malinois patrol dog of the force could have been “spotted” while either leaving the force camp at a place called Renganar or from a market place from where four more troops, who were going to their camp after leave, boarded the ill-fated four-wheeler.

The DG said security forces are witnessing some smart techniques being deployed by Maoists to plant and conceal deadly improvised explosive devices in these areas and they are “going deeper inside” to plant explosives beneath normal-looking roads and travel routes.

A Court of Inquiry that has been ordered by the force into the incident.

The martyred troops belonged to the 230th battalion of the force deployed in south Bastar area for anti-Naxal operations and the DG said had been very instrumental in conducting successful operations in the past.

PTI