Centre doubts Chhattisgarh government's claims on police numbers

NEW DELHI: The Centre has grave doubts over the Chhattisgarh government's claim that nearly 900 personnel had been deployed for the security of Congress leaders who were massacred by the Maoists in the state on Saturday.

"The deployment was more on paper than on the ground," a home ministry official told ET, rejecting the state government's assertion that it had deployed 885 state police and CRPF personnel to provide security to the Congress leaders and to sanitise the route of their rally along the national highway between Sukma and Jagdalpur.

The state government had said that a 23-member CRPF group had been tasked with sanitising the area between Darbha and Jheeram Valley, where the attack took place, and that 44 security personnel had been deputed for protecting Mahendra Karma, Nand Kumar Patel, VC Shukla and Kavasi Lakhma.

However, the state DGP, Ram Nivas, on Tuesday conceded to the visiting team of home secretary RK Singh and the director of Intelligence Bureau, Asif Ibrahim, that there were slipups in the security and the police also failed to reach the spot for over two hours after the attack, an official familiar with the matter said.
"Senior state police officers were simply not coordinating the security plan - no more than a dozen cops with small arms were with the Congress leaders en route," the official said, adding that the home secretary briefed the Prime Minister's Office and Cabinet Secretariat on these lapses upon his return to Delhi on Tuesday.

As an initial measure, the Chhattisgarh government on Tuesday suspended Bastar SP Mayank Shrivastava and shifted Bastar IG Himangshu Gupta. The initial probe has not revealed any sign of a conspiracy regarding the Congress convoy taking the national highway from Sukma to Jagdalpur rather than the longer but safer state highway through Dantewada.

The Congress leadership in the state had made it public on May 1 that the party would hold a rally in Sukma at noon on May 25 and at 4 pm at a place named Keslur in Darbha.

"Both rallies and the pre-scheduled route were well-publicised and known to everyone. The leaders were in a hurry to get to Darbha as the rally at Sukma had stretched till 3:30 pm and they were running late for the meeting at Darbha. That may explain 22 cars travelling together in violation of standard operating procedures as they must have wanted to get to Jagdalpur before dark," a senior official said.

The National Investigation Agency plans to speak to the Congress MLA from Konta, Kavasi Lakhma, who appears to have had a miraculous escape despite being in the same car as the state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel. The Maoists had pulled out Patel and his son to kill them but spared Lakhma, who managed to escape from the spot on a motorcycle to reach the Darbha Police station. In a statement on Tuesday, the Maoists said that only Karma, Patel and Shukla were their targets.