At least four suspected Maoists were killed and a District Reserve Guard member lost his life in a gunfight in Chhattisgarh’s Abujhmad area on Saturday, reported The Indian Express.

Security forces seized automatic weapons, including AK-47s, from the site of gunbattle.

The District Reserve Guard member who was killed in the gunfight was identified as Head Constable Sannu Karam.

District Reserve Guard teams from Narayanpur, Dantewada, Jagdalpur, Kondagaon, along with the Special Task Force, carried out a joint operation, Inspector General of Police for Bastar Range, Sundarraj P said.

Abujhmad is a large forested area bordering the Narayanpur and Kanker districts in Bastar region. The area is a stronghold of Maoist militants.

After the gunfight broke out on Saturday evening, intermittent firing lasted for hours. Once the firing ceased, search operations were carried out, leading to the bodies of four suspected Maoists being recovered.

They were all said to have been wearing uniforms of People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army, an armed wing of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

In the previous year, 217 suspected Maoists were killed by security forces, according to The Indian Express. Over 100 of them were killed in and around Abujhmad during the Maad Bachao Abhiyan, a campaign by security forces against the Maoist presence in Abujhmad.

On October 4, security forces killed 31 suspected Maoists in a gunfight inside a forest along the border of the Narayanpur and Dantewada districts in the region. This reportedly marked the deadliest such operation in Chhattisgarh’s 24-year history.

Malini Subramaniam has reported for Scroll that while many of those killed in Bastar this year have been declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.

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