Jagdalpur: More than 72 hours after the Naxal attack in the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, the post-mortem report of senior Congress leaders Mahendra Karma and Nand Kumar Patel has been submitted to the Chhattisgarh Police. Sources say Karma bled to death and more than 75 stab founds have been found on his body.
Sources say multiple bullet wounds and wounds of a blunt object have also been found on Karma's body. Sources add that state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel's body also had bullet and stab wounds, but less than Karma.
According to the post-mortem report, Nand Kumar Patel's son Dinesh Patel had an axe like wound on his head and also had injuries from bullets and stabbing, say sources. Saturday's Naxal attack left 24 people dead.
Senior Congress leader VC Shukla, who was critically injured in the attack, continues to be on ventilator support. While the Congress has demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Raman Singh for the security lapses, the BJP has accused the Congress of politicising the issue. BJP President Rajnath Singh will be in Chhattisgarh on Wednesday to meet the family members of the victims.
Heads have also started rolling over Saturday's bloodbath. The Chhattisgarh government on Tuesday suspended the SP of Bastar district Jagdalpur and transferred the IG and the collector of Bastar range. SP Mayank Shrivastava has been suspended while IG Himanshu Gupta was shifted to police headquarters. Bastar Collector P Anabalagan has been shifted to the state secretariat, Secretary, Public Relations of the state government, Aman Singh said.
Meanwhile, the NIA continues its probe into Saturday's Naxal attack that resulted in the deaths of senior Congress leaders in the state. The NIA will probe whether top Naxal leader Katakam Sudarshan was behind the attack on the Congress rally that has exposed serious security lapses in the state and lack of security personnel to tackle Maoist menace. The probe agency's teams have started speaking to local villagers. They are also collecting evidences from the attack site. The NIA teams first visited the hospital where the injured are being treated and spoke to the eyewitnesses.
Sources had said earlier the Intelligence Bureau had sent a generic alert that Sudarshan, a central member of the CPI-Maoist, was active in the area and could be planning something. But since the warning was not specific, the forces at the ground could not take effective measures to counter the threat.
But even as NIA began its probe in the heavily forested and hilly Darbha Ghati, the Maoists, in a statement, claimed responsibility for the attack and said the act was a revenge for the "atrocities done by the Salwa Judum". Gudsa Usendi, spokesperson for the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee, CPI(Maoist), alleged that both ruling BJP and opposition Congress in the state are equally responsible for anti-people policies. "That is why senior functionaries of Congress were targetted," the statement said.
"Nand Kumar Patel was suppressing people. It was in his tenure in the Centre when paramilitary forces were deployed in the Bastar area. Mahendra Karma and his family have been exploiting tribals for long. They were into land grabbing and committed atrocities on tribals," the statement further said.
"Karma was the prime target along with Nand Kumar Patel and VC Shukla but we regret killing of innocents and lower Congress functionaries," it added.
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