2 ITBP officers killed in Bastar Maoist ambush

RAIPUR: In the second Maoist attack on ITBP personnel in Bastar’s Narayanpur district in a month, two officers were killed in an ambush Friday. An AK-47 and bulletproof vests were looted.
A team from ITBP’s 45th battalion was on an area-domination operation when it came under fire just 600m from the Kademeta security camp in Chotedonger. A Maoist “action team” had laid the ambush in a patch of dense jungle, Bastar Range IG P Sundarraj said.
The ITBP men took up positions and fired back, but assistant commandant Sudhakar Shinde from Maharashtra and assistant sub-inspector Gurmukh Singh from Punjab were killed.
Reinforcements were sent to the spot and the bodies of the officers were evacuated. Police said they would get details of the ambush once the security personnel returned to base with the bodies. The encounter site is about 140km from Jagdalpur and 270km south of Raipur.
On July 20, Maoists killed an ITBP constable and injured an officer who were part of a road opening party for an MLA’s convoy in Narayanpur.