Van with detonators goes missing in Maoist den in Chhattisgarh

October 15th, 2009 RANCHI - Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi Thursday blamed the Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh governments for the Maoist problem. Gandhi told reporters that while Maoists were a law and order problem, state governments were not taking programmes meant to uplift the poor to those for whom these were intended.

September 27th, 2009 BHOPAL - Four suspected Maoists who had allegedly crossed into Madhya Pradesh from Chhattisgarh have been detained in Shahdol district, police said Sunday. The four - Ramnath, Lalsai, Roopsai and Sunao, all of them Gond tribals aged 25-30 - had sneaked in from Narayanpur district in Chhattisgarh, a police official said.

September 7th, 2009 RAIPUR - Chhattisgarh police Monday gunned down a deputy commander of the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) and arrested four of his colleagues, officials said. "We raided a CPI-Maoist hideout in a hilly area under Bhansi locality in Dantewada district and shot dead a deputy commander and arrested four of his colleagues including a minor boy," Superintendent of Police Amresh Mishra told reporters at the district headquarters in Dantewada, some 380 km south of capital Raipur.

August 21st, 2009 RAIPUR - Maoist violence was continuing in certain parts of the country because development was not reaching the troubled areas, particularly in states like Chhattisgarh, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi said here Friday. Accusing Chhattisgarh's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of failing to reach the fruits of development to vast Maoist-hit areas, Gandhi said: "If the government fails to reach people, then problem begins, and this is the case in Chhattisgarh." "See how Andhra Pradesh tackled the Maoist problem, it actually took the central government welfare schemes to problem-hit areas, but in Chhattisgarh the government is not reaching trouble-hit areas," the Congress leader told a press conference here.

July 15th, 2009 RAIPUR - The Chhattisgarh government Wednesday announced relief measures for families hit by Maoist violence including jobs to dependents of policemen killed while battling rebels. "The state government has decided to give jobs, on compassionate basis and within 60 days, to the relatives of the policemen killed by the Naxalites," Chief Minister Raman Singh told reporters after a cabinet meeting here.

July 6th, 2009 RAIPUR - A day after a van laden with detonators went missing in Chhattisgarh's restive Bastar region, police said Monday that the van had been recovered but the detonators were looted by the unidentified people who had hijacked the vehicle. The Mahindra Max pickup van that had 2,500 detonators went missing Sunday on the way from Mandir Hasod on Raipur's outskirts to an iron-ore mine in Kirandul in Dantewada region.

July 5th, 2009 RAIPUR - A private van loaded with detonators went missing in Chhattisgarh's restive Maoist stronghold of Bastar region Sunday, police said. Officials at the police headquarters here said a massive search operation was launched to trace the vehicle, which was reported missing somewhere in the forested area of Bastar district.

July 1st, 2009 RAIPUR - Six suspected Maoists were apprehended in a forested stretch in Chhattisgarh's restive Bastar region with arms and materials used for making land mines, police said Wednesday. The insurgents were held in the jungles of Narayanpur district when a joint team of the district police and the special task force encircled a meeting venue of the Maoist rebels, Deputy Inspector General of police Pawan Deo said here.

June 23rd, 2009 LUCKNOW - A Maoist was arrested Tuesday in Uttar Pradesh and explosives, including detonators and gelatin rods, seized from him, police said Tuesday. "Baleshwar Thakur was nabbed today (Tuesday) by the Special Operation Group (SOG) sleuths in forests of the Sonebhadra district," Superintendent of Police Ram Kumar told reporters.

May 31st, 2009 RAIPUR - The Chhattisgarh Police Sunday gunned down a Maoist commander in a gun battle in the state's northern forested stretch. Officials said a police search squad had killed Ramesh Barua alias Mukesh in a gun battle in a thickly forested area of Surguja district, 400 km from here.

May 11th, 2009 RAIPUR - At least ten policemen have gone missing after a convoy escorted by 41-member police force was attacked by heavily armed Maoists in Chhattisgarh in the late hours of Sunday. The Maoists first attacked the convoy in Dhamtari, and then they ambushed the convoy near Risgaon village the hilly district.

February 1st, 2009 RAIPUR - The Chhattisgarh police Monday sealed off the border with Maharashtra, where Maoist radicals ambushed a police search squad in Gadchiroli district Sunday, killing 15 state police personnel, officials said. 'The Sunday attack took place very close to Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon district border in Maharashtra and we sealed off the forested border because Maoists may sneak into Chhattisgarh following stepped up drive by the police from the other side of the border,' Pawan Deo, deputy inspector general of police, said here.

January 25th, 2009 RAIPUR - Chhattisgarh Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan took the salute at the Republic Day parade held here Monday and praised the commitment of the security forces battling Maoist insurgency in the state.

January 23rd, 2009 RAIPUR - Five Maoist insurgents were killed in a shootout with a police team in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh late Saturday evening, a top police official said. The shootout took place when the joint team of the Chhattisgarh police and Special Police Officers (SPOs) came face-to-face with a group of Maoists in a thickly forested area under the Bhairamgarh police station of Bijapur district, about 400 km south of here, according to Director General of Police Pawan Deo.

January 7th, 2009 RAIPUR - Four officials, including three special police officers (SPOs), were killed by Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh, the police said Thursday. The killings were reported early Thursday from two separate areas of the state's violence-hit Bijapur district of southern Bastar region.