Bijapur IED attack: 2 security personnel dead, five injured after police vehicle explodes in Chattisgarh's Kutru

Naxals targeted a bus ferrying nearly 30 jawans with an improvised explosive device (IED) in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur, leaving two of them dead and five injured, the second attack on Monday ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the district on Saturday. Earlier this morning, Naxals had triggered twin IED blasts and opened fire on a patrolling team of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) on Bijapur-Bhopalpatnam road in the district that led to a gun-battle. However, no casualties was reported either side in that incident. The explosion targeting the bus occurred near Godma village, around 450 kilometres from the state capital, when the jawans were out on an anti-Maoist operation, police said. “Two jawans belonging to the District Reserve Guard (DRG) were killed and five others sustained injuries in the explosion,” a senior police official told PTI. The IED blast damaged the front portion of the bus, which was carrying a squad of at least 30 jawans. The personnel sitting in the front side bore the brunt of the explosion, he said. Additional personnel were rushed to the spot soon after the incident and the injured jawans were taken to a hospital in Bijapur, he said. Further details are awaited. Notably, the security forces have intensified search operations in the forest in view of the prime minister’s visit to Bijapur scheduled on April 14. The incident comes just a day after  Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh said  “frustrated Maoists” are losing their footholds due to the joint actions of the state and central governments which have put the state on the path of development by building roads, schools and hospitals in remote, inaccessible areas that were earlier the hotbeds of left-wing extremist militias. The longest-serving chief minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also said that Naxalism can only be countered through development and that there would be “no dearth of money” in this regard as long as Narendra Modi is the prime minister.

“My dream for the state is a peaceful and progressive Chhattisgarh. We are on that path. We will soon end the menace of Naxalism from its roots. We are progressing in that direction,” Singh told IANS in an interview in Raipur.

On 22 March, 15 Naxals, two of them carrying cash rewards, were arrested from two places in Chhattisgarh’s Maoist hotbed Sukma district. The arrests came nine days after nine Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed in an IED blast, when suspected Maoists blew up their mine-protected vehicle in the Kistaram area in Sukma. With inputs from agencies