Bloodbath: Naxalites kill 26 cops in Chhattisgarh

NEW DELHI: Naxalites on Sunday spread red terror in Chhattisgarh killing 26 police personnel and injuring many others. Rajnandgaon���s Superintendent of Police B K Choubey was among the injured and was battling for his life.

���Six policemen were killed and several injured in an ambush in a thickly forested stretch of Rajnandgaon district where a reinforcement party is struggling to reach due to the hilly terrain,��� agency reports quoting ADGP Girdhari Nayak told reporters. Mr Nayak said more details were still awaited, as the thickly forested attack site had no communication link with the rest of the state.

Maoists have unleashed a string of violent attacks over the past few months, targeting mainly police and Central para-military personnel. There were also attempts to stall the election exercise in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Bihar. Security experts have been maintaining that most of the government measures to tackle the problem have completely failed. This, according to them, is because of the treatment of a serious national problem as a mere law and order issue. During the last UPA government, the issue was left to state governments to handle.

The government had reported to Parliament last week that there has been a spurt in Naxalite violence in the past six months. ���Between January and June 2009, 455 people have been killed. This include 200 security personnel,��� minister of state for home Ajay Maken had told the Rajya Sabha. Incidentally, 82% of these casualties were reported from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Bihar. The government had told Parliament that it has adopted an integrated approach to deal with the Left wing extremism in the areas of security, development and public perception.