Two Naxals, including a woman, were killed in an encounter with security forces in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district on the morning of Wednesday, 8 May, the police said.
Later that day, in the evening, at least five more Naxals, including three women, were gunned down in by security personnel in the Koraput district of Odisha.
The Chhattisgarh Operation
The first encounter took place around 5 am at a forest near Gonderas village in Chhattisgarh, when a joint team of the District Reserve Guard (DRG) and the Special Task Force (STF) was out on an anti-Maoist operation, Deputy Inspector General (anti-Naxal operations) Sundarraj P told PTI.
The Naxals initiated the exchange of fire which lasted for about an hour, following which the rebels fled from the spot, he said.
"During search, the body of a woman Naxal clad in uniform was recovered from the spot along with an Insas rifle and a 12 bore gun", the DIG said, adding that the others managed to drag the body of their male colleague inside the forest," he said.
Some ammunition, Maoist literature, items of daily use and other Naxal-related material were found at the spot, he told PTI.
The DIG also said that a search operation was underway in the area to trace the rest of the Naxals.
Dantewada Superintendent of Police Abhishek Pallava said, acting on specific inputs about presence of 70 to 80 rebels in Gonderas, a joint team of around 260 security personnel had launched the operation, reports PTI.
Women commandos of the recently raised DRG platoon, named 'Danteshwari Ladake' (fighters of Goddess Danteshwari), were also involved in the operation, he said.
Security forces have intensified anti-Naxal operations in Dantewada following the killing of the BJP MLA Bhima Mandavi and four police personnel in a deadly attack by rebels in the Shyamgiri area of the district on 9 April.
According to police, three commander rank cadres of Maoists were gunned down in separate encounters in Dantewada in the past one month.
The Odisha Encounter
Later in the day at least five Maoists, including three women, were killed in an encounter with security personnel in Koraput district of Odisha, a senior police officer said, reports PTI.
The encounter took place in a forest within the limits of the Padua police station in the morning when personnel of the Special Operations Group (SOG) and District Voluntary Force (DVF) were conducting a combing operation in the area.
The Maoists fired at the SOG and DVF men after noticing them and the security personnel retaliated the fire, killing them, the official said.
"Of the five Maoists killed in the encounter, three were women," the Additional Director General of Police (operations) R P Koche said, according to PTI.
The security forces began the combing operation following a tip-off that around 15 Maoists were hiding in the forest, officials said.
Koraput SP K V Singh said the security personnel recovered five guns from the spot.
(With inputs from two PTI reports.)
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