Chhattisgarh: 5 commandos injured in encounters with Naxals
November 12, 2018 18:03Five CoBRA personnel were injured in two encounters with the
Naxals in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district on Monday, the first phase of
the state elections, police said.
The skirmish took place at separate
spots at a forest in Pamed, around 500 km from Raipur.
The Commando
Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) -- an elite unit of the Central
Reserve Police Force (CRPF) -- was patrolling the area in view of the
voting going on in the region, a senior police officer said.
A group
of Naxalites opened fire on a patrolling team of the CoBRA's 204th
battalion when it was near Empur village.
When the security personnel
retaliated, the rebels fled from the spot, the officer told PTI.
The
injured, sub-inspector Lal Chand and a constable, were taken out of the
forest and admitted to a hospital, he said.
After the first incident,
when the same patrolling team was cordoning off a forest patch near
Majiguda village, the rebels again opened fire at them, injuring
assistant commandant Amit Deswal, head constable Sunil and constable
Chaitanya, the officer said.
Reinforcement was rushed to the spot and
efforts were on to evacuate the three personnel, he added. Voting in
18 constituencies of eight Naxal-affected districts, including Bijapur,
was being held on Monday.
Around 1.25 lakh security personnel were
deployed in the region to ensure peaceful polling. -- PTI