Not an intelligence or operational failure: CRPF DG on Chhattisgarh encounter

A day after 22 safety personnel have been killed throughout an encounter with Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar area, the Director General of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Kuldeep Singh, dismissed claims that the operation was an intelligence failure.
“If it was a bait, more security personnel would have died. The Maoists would have set up an ambush at a place where we would have suffered maximum damage. We were moving through an area that is under their control and as such, they do have a tactical advantage there. They started firing at us with light machine guns when we were returning following our operation. The Security forces have fought valiantly,” Singh advised The Indian Express.
He added that appreciable harm has additionally been inflicted upon the Maoists, who, in accordance with intelligence inputs, used three tractor-trolleys to hold the wounded. “We suspect that 25-30 of them are injured and about one-third of them have died,” Singh knowledgeable.

Giving out extra particulars concerning what will need to have occurred, one other CRPF official stated, “In the core areas, Maoists have the power to shortly organise an offensive. If you’re conducting an operation for lengthy hours, they’ll come to find out about your presence and mobilise their forces. So, them showing ready doesn’t at all times imply that they’ve prior details about the motion of our forces.

Another official knowledgeable that no more than 15 or 16 weapons have been looted regardless of the excessive variety of casualties on the CRPF’s facet.

The safety personnel have been a part of a “combined operation” that had been deliberate for weeks and was supposed to focus on Battalion No. 1 Area Commander Hidma, probably the most needed Maoists stated to be chargeable for a number of assaults towards safety forces.
Starting Friday, greater than 2,000 personnel had set out from 5 camps to a location round 14.5 km from Tarrem, a camp close to the Sukma-Bijapur border. Officials stated the operation had been delayed by two days due to a law-and-order state of affairs in Bijapur.

The ambushed group was a part of a 450-strong contingent that had not met with any resistance or come throughout any human presence. But on the way in which again, officers stated, they have been attacked by round 600 Maoists who chased them, killing and maiming a number of.