Security forces in the central state of Chhattisgarh were conducting an operation against the left-wing insurgent group in the state’s Bastar Division when one of the teams was attacked by the insurgents, Chhattisgarh police chief DM Awasthi said on Sunday.
Search operations for a missing security member are still ongoing in the area, Awasthi added.
The government is involved in a decades-long conflict with Maoist rebel groups, also known as Naxals, who launch attacks on government forces in an attempt to overthrow the state and start a classless society. Maoists are widely active in central India, in regions inhabited mainly by tribal people.
Attacks by militants in several states, including Maharashtra, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, where the rebel movement still has strength, are common.
The Bastar Division, where Sunday’s battle took place, includes the Sukma-Bijapur border areas – an area believed to be among a number of important Maoist strongholds.
Naxalite groups have been active in the country since the 1960s, but the modern insurgency did not begin until the early 2000s. Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh once described Maoist rebels – who are well organized and trained – as the “most serious threat to the country’s internal security “.
More than 2,100 civilians in India have been killed in the Maoist insurgency since 2010.
In April 2017, 25 policemen were killed and six others were injured when hundreds of suspected Maoist rebels attacked a convoy in central India.
Suspicious Maoists also attacked during India’s 2019 elections, reportedly shooting at a voting supervisor in the eastern state of Odisha. In another incident in the same district that year, alleged Maoists approached a vehicle towards a polling center and forced officials to disembark before setting it on fire.
According to a 2019 report by the Indian Ministry of Internal Affairs, 90 districts in 11 states are affected by some form of Naxal or Maoist militancy.
The government responded to the Maoist insurgency with a security operation in areas where the groups are active, an approach that, while appearing to reduce the level of threat, has been criticized by some observers as being heavy and subject to abuse.