Two para-military troopers drawn from CRPF’s elite CoBRA battalion were martyred on Monday in a gunfight with leftist insurgents in a forested stretch in restive Bastar’s Bijapur district, a senior police officer said. The gunfight broke out around 10.30 in the morning at village Irapalli, some 500 km south of state capital Raipur. One Maoist insurgent was also gunned down in the encounter.
Officials at police headquarters informed that at least four CoBRA jawans were injured in the gunfight and were airlifted to Raipur for urgent treatment.
Chhattisgarh is one of the worst Naxal-hit states of India. Maoists hold sway in vast forested interiors of mineral-rich Bastar since late 1980s.
But in recent months incidents of violence reported a sharp drop mainly since Congress came to power in late 2018.