Trooper injured in IED explosion in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur

The IED was planted barely 1.5 km from Kutul camp towards Bedamakoti, officials said.

“The jawan injured in the incident has been moved to Narayanpur district hospital. He is stable,” said an official.

This came on a day when security forces detected another IED in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district. The IED weighed 45 kg and was planted on an unpaved road around 2 km away from Cherpal village on the Cherpal-Palnar road, where a new police camp came up this year.

The bomb was detected by the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS) team of the Central Reserve Police Force’s (CRPF) battalion number 222, which was returning from an area domination exercise. The area was cordoned off to blast the explosive.

“It was a command IED. The plan was to target the vehicles of security forces when they set out on anti-naxal operations,” said an official.

Maoists widely use IEDs as part of their guerrilla warfare – the last three months alone have seen security forces detect 123 IEDs and defuse 13.

On March 23, a group of security personnel had a narrow escape after an ED went off just moments after their vehicle passed through the spot in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district. Two jawans and a civilian driver of the vehicle suffered minor injuries in the ripples caused by the explosion.

On January 6, eight security personnel and a civilian driver were killed when a command IED ripped through their vehicle while they were returning from an anti-insurgency operation in Abujhmad in which five Maoists were killed.