Maoist Attack: Chhattisgarh Cong chief, son killed

Mangaloretoday/DHNS

Raipur: May 26, 2013: Bullet-riddled bodies of abducted Chhattisgarh Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son and eight others were found in Bastar on Sunday, a day after the brazen Maoist strike on a Congress convoy that has sparked nationwide outrage, with leaders condemning it as an attack on democracy.

 

 

The bodies of Patel, his son Dinesh and eight others, mainly security personnel, were recovered from the Jiram valley in Bastar division, police said. With this, the toll in Saturday’s attack has risen to 27.

Rattled by the incident in poll-bound Chhattisgarh, top leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi visited the state.

The prime minister asserted that the country would never bow down before Maoists. Singh, who was addressing party workers at Congress Bhavan here, said: “We will pursue the perpetrators of this crime with urgency, and I can assure the nation that the government is committed to bringing them to justice. Our leaders have sacrificed their lives. However, our country will never bow down before Naxalism.”
Sonia appreciated the courage and bravery of the leaders. She visited the injured in hospital.

“This is a cowardly act on the part of Maoists. It is not an attack on the Congress or its leaders, but an attack on democratic values,” she said while expressing grief at the loss of lives.

 

Rahul Gandhi, who arrived here on Sunday morning, said: “It is not an attack on the Congress. It is an attack on democracy. But, we’ll not fear such attacks and continue to move forward.”

Former Union minister V C Shukla, who was injured in the attack, was airlifted to Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon on Delhi’s outskirts from Raipur early this morning.
Doctors said that the 84-year-old’s condition was critical.

A number of political leaders, including the prime minister, Sonia Gandhi and L K Advani of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) visited the hospital. Shukla on Saturday underwent an operation in Jagdalpur hospital for removal of the three bullets .

Senior Congress leader Mahendra Karma and ex-MLA Uday Mudliyar were among the 27 killed, while Shukla and 31 others were wounded when heavily armed Maoists ambushed a convoy of party leaders inside a dense forest near National Highway 202 connecting Chhattisgarh with  Bhadrachalam district in  Andhra Pradesh.

Security has been stepped up at Congress Bhavan in Raipur and other vital installations in the state. The Centre has rushed more than 600 CRPF personnel, including elite CoBRA anti-Maoist commandos, to sanitise and take control of the Maoist attack site in Chhattisgarh.

Shocked by the attack, President Pranab Mukherjee said the nation would neither be overawed nor intimidated by such actions.

The BJP, condemning the Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh where the party is in power,  expressed its concern over frequent targeting of political activist by Maoists and called for an aggressive, unified and non-partisan strategy to fight the menace. “It is shocking and most unfortunate. We condemn this outright,” senior party leader and leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj tweeted. The CPI condemned the attack saying that violence and killings “do not have a place in democracy. We firmly disapprove the violence and killings to gain political power in a democratic country,” said CPI National Secretary D Raja. Congress leaders alleged that the convoy was not provided enough security, a charge rejected by the BJP.

BJP deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Ravi Shankar Prasad said over a dozen security personnel were killed in the attack. “They (the personnel) died saving them. It shows there was security cover,” he said. Congress workers disrupted rail and road services during the day-long bandh called by the party in the state to press for the dismissal of the BJP government in the wake of the Maoist attack.

Congressmen stopped movement of trains in Raigarh, the home district of state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, who was killed in the attack.