A day after 75 CRPF jawans and two district police personnel were massacred by Maoists near Chintalnar village in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, there was complete silence in the area, as if nothing happened.
While the patrol party was startled by a series of pressure-mine and IED blasts and a rain of bullets by over 1,000 Maoists, reinforcements were neutralised on their way almost an hour into the fierce fighting that ensued.
“It was like bursting of firecrackers,” Dharmendra Singh, a small-time businessman in Chintalnar, 35 km from Dornapal police station on the Sukma-Konta national highway 221, said.
“We knew something major was happening out there in the jungle.”
The villagers say they stood cuddled along the road. It was not before 9 am that they could understand the gravity of the encounter. That was when CRPF personnel sought their help to shift blood-soaked bodies to the base camp.
“I had never seen such a gory sight before,” Lallu Singh, another villager, said. He said he took risk in rushing to the spot and helping the injured jawans to transport bodies to the camp.
“It’s a landmine-strewn area and some pressure bombs are still alive out there, but in such a situation I could not but help the CRPF men,” he said. “It was all a scene of chaos and anger.”
Maoists chose to hit the personnel when they were returning to their base camp at the same spot at Chintagupha, where they had attacked a police party three years ago killing 12.
While accounts differ, the CRPF jawans were apparently on a 72-hour patrolling spree deep into the forest that is a Maoist stronghold, as part of Operation Green Hunt.
“It’s a regular ambush point,” a Dantewada police officer said.
The rebels were waiting atop two hillocks for the jawans to enter the ring, a tactic similar to the three incidents that took place in Gadchiroli last year. Though there’s no confirmation, there is a strong possibility that the unit was drawn into a trap after a false alarm pertaining to Maoist presence.
