New Delhi: Anti-Naxal operations will be intensified in Maoist violence-hit states including in Jharkhand, CRPF chief Pranay Sahay said on Friday as he described as "barbaric" the planting of a bomb in the body of a dead trooper. The CRPF Director General returned to New Delhi after his four-day visit to Jharkhand where 14 people - ten security personnel and four civilians - were killed in an Maoist encounter in Latehar district earlier this week.
Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) lost nine of its men while one personnel of the state anti-Naxal force - Jharkhand Jaguars - was killed in the incident on January 7. "The operations will be intensified. We will take forward the strikes... There will be no let up in anti-Naxal operations," Sahay told reporters after he briefed Union Home Secretary RK Singh about the Naxal ambush.
He said the morale of the force was "high" and they will be looking to enhance their capabilities in forthcoming offensives and, if need arises, more units will be deployed in the state. "The incident (surgically inserting an IED in a dead CRPF personnel's abdomen) is inhuman, barbaric and this shows that Maoists have crossed all limits of depravity," he said.
Sahay also said some people have been detained by Jharkhand police in connection with the Latehar encounter. Eighteen battalions (18,000 personnel) of the force have been deployed in the state as part of anti-Naxal measures. Sahay denied reports suggesting the explosives left by Naxals after the January 7 ambush had "Pakistan markings".
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