Recruiting youth to “wage a war against the state”, organising “dummy training camps” and “conspiracy meetings”, and keeping “prohibited arms and ammunition and explosive materials” – these are the allegations against 17 people charged with the 2024 Maoist attack on three Central Reserve Police Force campus in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur.
In its chargesheet, filed before a special court in Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Friday named 17 people for the attack, of whom 16 are absconding. The single accused in custody is Sodi Baman @ Deval.
The case relates to the attack on the Central Reserve Police Force’s (CRPF) new camp at Dharmavaram and two adjacent CRPF/CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) camps located along the northern bank of the Chintavagu River and Pamed, the southernmost village of Bijapur, on January 16, 2024. Traditionally part of south Bastar, this was for a decade considered the stronghold of Battalion No. 01 of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), the armed wing of (Maoist).
The absconding accused include two Central Committee Members (CCM), two Special Zonal/ State Committee Members (SZC/SCM) and other top cadres of Battalion 1, Telangana State Committee and Pamed Area Committee. These accused also recruited youngsters to wage war against India, the NIA said.
The chargesheet filed Friday before an NIA special court in Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh, was under various sections of Indian Penal Code, Arms Act, Explosive Substances Act, and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, an official statement from the NIA said.
Armed with barrel grenade launchers (BGLs) and automatic weapons, the assailants — a group of 250-300 members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) — attempted to loot weapons and other belongings of the security forces from the camps, the NIA, which took over investigation into the case in February 2024, said, adding that 12 security personnel were injured in the attack.
The NIA registered a case against 21 named and 250-300 unknown armed cadres of proscribed terrorist organisation CPI (Maoist).
Investigations revealed that the chargesheeted accused had been involved in the recruitment of youth, as part of a criminal conspiracy to wage war against the democratically-elected government of India, the statement went on to say.
“They were in possession of prohibited arms, ammunition and explosive materials, and had organised and attended conspiracy meetings. They also established a dummy training camp as a replica of the target camps, imparted training and gave motivational speeches to their armed cadres to carry out an armed rebellion, besides conducting recce of the said camps and executing the final attacks,” the statement said.
Asked about the significance of the CRPF camps, Inspector General for Bastar Range Sundarraj P told : “The remarkable achievement of the camps was (that it was) facilitating the successful implementation of Chintavagu river bridge project, which had long remained a distant dream for local population. The civil transportation has begun in the area connecting Pamed to the district headquarters of Bijapur. Over time, more than 90 security personnel have attained martyrdom in the Pamed Basaguda-Awapalli-Usor axis due to various ambushes/IED blast incidents”.
