Gaps cause grief

The Naxal attack in Chhattisgarh highlights strategic shortcomings

- NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA

APRIL 3, 2021. It was that time of the year when the foliage was dry and sparse, and there was no rain or slush to hamper the movement of guerrillas in their favourite playground—the killing fields of Chhattisgarh. The sun was directly overhead but the ultras were not chasing shadows under trees. Armed with grenades, rocket launchers, light-machine guns, rifles and country-made pistols, more than 300 men and women of the banned CPI (Maoist) surrounded 450 security personnel in the open fields in Tarem near the Sukma-Bijapur border. They killed 22 securitymen and took one hostage.

The terror script has not changed since the massacre of 76 CRPF personnel near Chintalnar village in Dantewada on April 6, 2010. That attack almost wiped out the entire battalion of CRPF.

In subsequent years, the dance of death has continued in Bijapur, Darbha Valley, Dantewada, Sukma and Bastar, where battalion number one of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) has claimed more than 100 lives in the last decade.

On April 5, Union Home Minister Amit Shah flew down to the Basaguda camp of the CRPF, to find out what went wrong. The problems are one too many and the buck does not stop with just one person, one department or one government.

When security personnel are inducted in counter-insurgency forces like the CRPF’s CoBRA commando unit or the state police’s Special Task Force (STF) or District Reserve Guard (DRG) battalions, they undergo a basic compulsory training for at least three months and are then deployed on the field. While there is no dearth of commando training centres today, holding regular courses and updating the syllabus and trends to learn new skills and tactics for intelligence gathering and strategical planning of operations still remain a far cry.