11 killed by Naxals lay for 18 hrs in mud till villagers, families reached
The bodies of 11 men, including nine constables and an SPO who died in the Naxal attack last Friday in forests of Bijapur, lay in mud and rain for over 18 hours before villagers, including the father of one of the deceased, picked them up in a bullock cart the next morning.
The police party accompanying them carried back only the four wounded constables to the Bhadrakali police station, 4 km away. The station officer did not send a force to retrieve the bodies as “the men were low on morale and did not want to risk another Naxal attack”.
Of the four wounded jawans brought to the Bhadrakali thana, two died at night for want of medical facilities.
In fact, the police and forensic teams were yet to visit the spot till Tuesday afternoon, where live and empty cartridges, bloodstained clothes and broken sandals were lying strewn around. The stench was still strong. The tractor hired by the police to carry rations lay abandoned, its tyres flattened. The driver, Khursam Khennaiya, also died in the attack.
The team from Bhadrakali had gone to receive nearly 15 jawans coming along with rations from the Bhopalpatnam police station. The 19-km stretch between the two stations through extremely dense forests is muddy and non-motorable, and passes through the Chintabaghu river, crossed by boat. The vulnerable stretch witnessed a similar Naxal attack last September in which two policemen were killed and four abducted.
In the absence of a road, policemen between these two stations, located in the heart of the Naxal stronghold in Bijapur, traverse the stretch on foot, taking five hours. Choppers are rarely available.
“Whenever there is an emergency, we send a request for a helicopter. But its availability depends on many factors... Had there been at least a bridge on the river, it would not have taken so long for the men to reach Bhadrakali,” said Bijapur SP Rajendra Narain Dash.
“We came to know about the attack around 4.30 pm, but policemen did not bring the bodies. We waited through the evening and night, praying animals did not eat my son’s corpse. Then in the morning we brought the bodies in a bullock cart,” said Khursam Achhaiya, father of deceased SPO Basant Khursam.
“We did want to go that evening but our men were low on morale about going back into the forest. Also we have only 30-odd staff, if we had sent a team, we could risk an attack both on the team and the thana,” said an officer of the Bhadrakali station. (basically they were scared )
Though a senior IPS officer said in Raipur that it was bad luck that all jawans were sitting together in the tractor and got ambushed, the local police disagree. “We operate in among the most difficult Naxal terrains of the state without even basic facilities. Give me power and communication network and we can deal with any threat,” said an officer of the Bhadrakali station.
Power is out for almost the whole day at the Bhadrakali village, of around 700 Gond tribals, and the cops live in open tents surrounded by forests and a pond. Cramped barracks, open-air kitchen, absolute darkness and absence of cellphone signals mark this crucial station along the Naxal-sensitive Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra border.
The cops hope that a generator, whose demand was made long ago, may now arrive. At the Bhadrakali thana, a policeman can be seen hurriedly climbing up to the Kali temple on a nearby hilltop. “To make a phone call one has to reach the peak,” explained his colleague.
“We are planning to improve communication. But wireless communication is very porous and can be intercepted by Naxals. We need mobile phone towers here. These are inter-border areas and should not be converted into dark zones,” said SP Dash at Bijapur headquarters.
For now, the sound of a helicopter is a bleak ray of light. As news arrived Tuesday afternoon that a chopper was arriving to replace some of the men at the Bhadrakali camp, quite a few queued up, hoping it was their turn to return.
While Chhattisgarh gave an undertaking before the Supreme Court that it has disbanded Special Police Officers, one of the men who died was an SPO, who was carrying arms. Deceased SPO Basant Khursam’s father Khursam Achaiyya said: “He was earning Rs 3,000 per month. He lived in the thana, carried a weapon and would go for routine operations like patrolling... When we went to collect his body, his weapon was missing, his arm was crushed.” Bijapur SP Rajendra Narain Dash, however, claimed: “Like other soldiers, the SPO was returning from vacation. He was not armed.” Officials admitted there are two SPOs still in the thana, and many more in camps and police stations nearby. “We do not know about a government undertaking,” said a police officer at Bhadrakali. Achaiyya is now afraid whether he will get the compensation. The farmer families of the driver and the SPO received only Rs 5,000 each for cremation
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