Police gave no specific inputs, says CRPF

The report submitted to MHA mentioned, “There was no specific alert about an attack by Maoists either on a road opening party (ROP) or a road construction team on March 11.” Three intelligence inputs provided earlier were acted upon, the report said.

This brought to fore the rift between the state police and the central police force on anti-Maoist operations in the state.

A senior officer said six Maoists were killed in the encounter and it was being verified. Chhattisgarh Police had earlier said they had given specific alerts to CRPF about a Maoist build-up in the area and they were planning an attack.

The security team comprising 48 personnel including six from Chhattisgarh police was attacked near Tongpal in Sukma district when the team was on its way to provide security to a road construction team.

“Some local newspapers reported that at least six Maoists were killed in the encounter and they have named them. We are verifying these reports and trying to ascertain the identity of persons named,” said Dilip Trivedi, DG, CRPF.

An official said Maoists could have taken positions a night before the attack. “It is possible that they started trickling into the area two-three days before the encounter and had taken positions a night before as they had carved out enclosures in the nearby fields. It was all done in a planned way and there were around 300 of them who had taken positions in three different directions,” said a senior officer.

The CRPF had earlier given a power-point presentation to Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, Home Secretary Anil Goswami, Director Intelligence Bureau Asif Ibrahim and DGP Chhattisgarh where they said there were three inputs on March 5th, 6th and 9th that Maoists had assembled at Badegadam, Moranga and Elignar villages, located 10-15 kilometres away from the site of encounter. But searches yielded no results, the CRPF had said.