Raipur, Aug 4 (IANS) Chhattisgarh has become the hotbed of Maoist insurgency in India with 1,948 attacks by the guerrillas in the past three years.
‘The state witnessed 1,948 attacks from July 2007 to July 2010 in which 418 civilians and 435 policemen, including 75 Special Police Officers, were killed,’ a official at the police headquarters here told IANS.
The official said about 95 percent of the attacks and casualties were reported from Bastar, a sprawling 40,000 sq km mineral-rich area in the south of the state which comprises five districts – Bijapur, Dantewada, Bastar, Narayanpur and Kanker.
Sources in the home department said the state’s 13 of the total 18 districts were hit by leftwing extremism since the late 1980s.
The death toll in Maoist violence exceeded 2,000 since the state came into existence in November 2000. Nearly 50 percent casualties were suffered by security forces, the sources said.
