Dantewada blast: Will avoid four-wheelers, deploy Road Opening Party in anti-Maoist operations, say police

Police sources in Aranpur said, “The ROP was not conducted as it was a covert operation and we did not want the Maoists to get a clue. But it was our mistake not to conduct an ROP while returning as we considered the path to be safe. Henceforth, we will use bikes after ROP or walk.”

Questions about lapses in the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) were raised soon after news of the attack jolted the entire state where no major Maoist attack has taken place in the last two years. Nine members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) Darbha division have been identified as accused in the case.

The nearly 50-km stretch between Dantewada city and Aranpur village near the border of Sukma, a district considered to be a war zone, was seen as safe by security personnel who had used the road several times in the past. But the massive IED blast has changed the perspective of the Dantewada police.

The police have issued a statement saying the IED appeared to have been planted 45 days ago by digging a foxhole tunnel.

A source with the police said he had an intuition that something might happen on the 3-km stretch where the blast occurred as that particular stretch was a bitumen road unlike the rest of the stretch which was concrete-laden with an additional layer of bitumen. The attackers deliberately choose this stretch to maximise the impact which would not have been as much if it was a concrete road, said sources.

The police are probing all angles and analysing the sequence of events, including reports regarding a small barrier put up on the stretch by youths to collect money for a local festival. This slowed down the vehicles which helped the Maoists with crucial time to detonate the IED. They are also investigating if the tip-off given to authorities was part of a larger plan to lure personnel to the spot.

A local police source said they studied the pattern of IED blasts and have enough facts to believe that the attacks on security forces will not slow down at least till the end of 2024.

To avoid further such incidents, combing operations on the stretch continued on Friday and the pattern of previous blasts reveals that three such explosions took place in 2018, which was an election year, and two more in 2019 but none in the three years that followed, till this week’s incident.

In 2018, the blasts took place in May, October and November, way beyond the Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign (TCOC) period, which starts in summer and ends as the monsoon begins. In 2019, the blasts took place in March and April. The lone BJP MLA Bhima Mandavi was killed in the blast in April while he was campaigning for the party during the general elections. The next general elections will be in 2024.