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Few Lessons Learnt
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Revisiting the horrors of Chintalnar massacre |
CRPF personnel on a long range patrol
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By Dilip Kumar Mekala
New Delhi: One of the deadliest attacks on Indian security forces which happened on 6 April 2010 at Tadmetla, near the Chintalnar village of Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh is hard to forget. Claiming the lives of 75 CRPF personnel and one police man, it raised several questions about the operational effectiveness and readiness of the forces involved in counter-Maoist operations.
Seve Several versions about the incident which went horribly wrong circulated in the
media, including the official one which came out of E.N. Ram Mohan’s one-man
committee appointed by the ministry of home affairs to investigate the incident.
However, it seems that the former director general of Border Security Force, Ram
Mohan, relied only on his interactions and communications with various people |
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involved in the operation to come to his conclusion. He did not wait for forensic evidence from the site, nor the last communications of the CRPF officers before dying.
Having said that, in his report, Ram Mohan held the inspector general of Chhattisgarh police and the newly-inducted deputy inspector general, CRPF, Nalin Prabhat, responsible for the thoughtless and impetuous planning of an operation which led to the butchering of the CRPF and the police personnel. Ram Mohan was equally critical of the poor state of CRPF’s training, junior leadership and operational discipline. One of the main reasons cited for the large number of casualty was non-adherence to the standard operating procedures (SOPs). Culling from Ram Mohan’s report, the media went to town, blaming the CRPF for the catastrophe, as if it was something they had brought upon themselves.
A few months after the massacre, a Maoists’ internal document describing the
incident in context of lessons learnt was seized in an operation. According to
the document, more than four Maoist companies (about 500 men), including the
main and secondary units, executed the operation whose objective was to reduce
the strength of the security forces in the area apart from capturing as many
weapons as possible. The local intelligence was gathered after a constant
reconnaissance over a period to ascertain the movement of the forces and the
routes that they usually take. The Maoists apparently carried out a few ambush
rehearsals before the final execution. According to their document, the original
planned ambush site was Chinnagutta Boru about four kilometre from Chintalnar
and 10 km from Chintagufa. |
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