Naxals kill man in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada on suspicion of being informer; fourth incident of violence in district in 3 days

Raipur: A 35-year-old man was killed by Naxals in the Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh, after accusing him of being a police informer, a police official said on Saturday. The deceased, identified as Lokesh Kartam, was attacked by Naxals late on Friday night at his house in Bade Gudra village under Kuakonda police station limits, the official said. “As per the preliminary information, a group of armed Naxals stormed into Kartam’s house and killed him with sharp weapons,” Dantewada Additional Superintendent of Police Gorakhnath Baghel told PTI. [caption id=“attachment_4944821” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Soon after being informed about the incident, a police team was sent to the place this morning and the body was brought to the police station, he said. “According to the villagers, the militants claimed that Kartam was working at the behest of police,” Baghel said adding that the victim was not associated with the police in any way. A case has been registered in this connection and a search operation has been launched in the area to trace the ultras, he added. With this, Dantewada district has witnessed four incidents of Naxal-related attacks in the last three days. These attacks are being viewed as Naxals’ reaction to the death of their 15 colleagues in an encounter with security forces in neighbouring Sukma district on 6 August. Two days after the encounter, naxals had torched two buses and a truck in Bhansi area of Dantewada after asking occupants of the vehicles to alight. Police had later recovered a human skeleton inside one of the charred buses. In another incident on the same day, the engine of an empty rake of the Visakhapatnam-Kirandul passenger train derailed after Naxals uprooted railway tracks near Kamaloor railway station in Dantewada. On 9 August, Maoists had torched a JCB machine, engaged in pipeline laying works, in Kuakonda area, while on Friday, they had set ablaze five empty trucks in Bacheli area of the district.