Raipur: Five years after the deadly Naxal strike at Tadmetla in Chhattisgarh in which 76 security personnel were killed, the CRPF has decided to trace the perpetrators by identifying them through videos released by the rebels following the attack.
“We have decided to request the state police to consider videos released by Maoists after the Tademtla incident as an evidence and trace the cadres who are visible in the clippings after identifying them,” Commandant V V N Prasanna of Central Reserve Police Force's II battalion told PTI.
The battalion is deployed in Sukma district of South Bastar.
Notably, 2-3 videos were released in 2013 by Maoists on the attack that took place on April 6, 2010, in Dantewada (now Sukma district) in which the ultras are seen indiscriminately firing on security personnel from hill top, posing with looted arms and ammunition and taking out funeral procession of some of their killed colleagues. The state police had framed charges against around 90 Naxals within a month of the attack.
Of them, 10, belonging to local villages, were arrested, but they were released by Dantewada district court in 2013 due to lack of evidence, Prasanna said. However, the investigation had revealed that over 300 armed guerrillas laid the ambush on Chintalnar-Tademtla road to execute the attack.
“After a detailed analysis of video clippings, we have identified around 30 of them, active in extreme south Bastar,” he said.
“Now the CRPF headquarters in New Delhi has decided to re-investigate the incident for identifying the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” he said.
“We will take out images of the ultras seen in videos and request Sukma district police to identify more assailants and frame charges against them,” Prasanna said, adding that the CRPF will extend all necessary assistance to police for using the latest technologies to identify the culprits and then to nab them.
After identification, the paramilitary force is going to put up photographs of the assailants in the interior villages seeking help of tribals to gather information which could lead to their arrest, he added.
In one of the deadliest Maoist attack on security forces in the country, Peoples' Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) of Maoists, the military wing of the rebels, had killed 75 CRPF personnel and one state police constable and injured eight others at Tadmetla in 2010.
