2 DRG jawans injured in Naxal encounter in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur; 6-month-old girl killed, mother hurt in crossfire, said the police officials on Monday.
A 6-month-old girl was killed and her mother was hurt in firing between security forces and Naxalites in Bijapur in Chhattisgarh on Monday, which also left two District Reserve Guard jawans injured, they added.
The gunfight took place at around 5 pm in a forest near Mutvandi village under Gangaloor police station limits when a DRG team was out on an anti-Naxal operation, the officials said.
The injured woman and the two jawans have been hospitalised, while a search operation was underway at the site of the encounter by personnel from the DRG and the Central Reserve Police Force, they added.
3,000 CAPF troops to move from Odisha to Chhattisgarh
The encounter commenced a day after the announcement of big movement of BSF troops. The official sources on Sunday said three battalions of the BSF comprising more than 3,000 personnel would move across the border from Odisha to Chhattisgarh and an equal number of ITBP units will further move into the Naxal stronghold of Abujhmad as part of a strategy to intensify anti-Maoist operations in their last bastions.
The new operational blueprint is part of a plan under which Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently made a declaration that India was "on the verge of" eliminating Left Wing Extremism (LWE).
"The last strike against LWE by forces such as the BSF, the CRPF and the ITBP is in the process. We are determined to end Naxalism in the country," Shah said on December 1 in Hazaribag, Jharkhand while addressing BSF troops on their 59th raising day. These forces are called as central armed police force (CAPFs).
Sources in the security establishment said that the Border Security Force (BSF) has been directed to create six new COBs or company operating bases in Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur district by initially moving one of its battalion based in Odisha's Malkangiri, just across the inter-state border. A BSF battalion has a strength of over 1,000 personnel.
The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which currently has about eight battalions located in Narayanpur, Rajnandgaon and Kondagaon districts of Chhattisgarh, has been asked to move one unit further inside the core area of Abujhmad.
