KANKER/NAGPUR: The Naxal attack on a CRPF party on Tuesday again brought to fore the lack of co-ordination and mistrust between the paramilitary force and the local police. A senior police officer said, “We were again told a lie that only four CRPF jawans were injured and the Naxals had surrounded the party. Our intelligence sources, however, told us about 25 CRPF jawans getting killed. We were told that the Naxals had disappeared into the forests by 2 pm.”
Such gaps in information -- some officials go to the extent of calling it ‘mistrust’ -- have persistently proved fatal for armed forces deployed in Chhattisgarh. The lack of coordination was also stated to be one of the reasons for the ambush at Dantewada in which 76 CRPF jawans were killed in April.
More than a year ago, a joint operational command was established between the paramilitary forces and the state police. Apart from CRPF, other forces like Border Security Force (BSF) and Indo-Tibet Border Police (ITBP) are also deployed in this Maoist-hit state.
However, senior officials of both CRPF and state police mince no words while criticising each other. The police say that the CRPF is not conditioned for an operation in an area like Chhattisgarh. The Dantewada incident has put them in an insulation mode. “They patrol no more than five km and simply don’t go further. After the Chintalnar fiasco, there are orders that to ensure that there are no more CRPF casualties.
However, even the new strategy of playing safe is catching them off guard,” said a senior police officer.
On the other hand, one of the major reasons that the CRPF does not trust the police is that they suspect that Maoists have infiltrated police ranks due to which they are getting killed, added a source. Those at CRPF also say that it’s the police which does not know the rules of the game. “We are the muscle and they are the brains. There can be no operation without intelligence inputs, which the local police does not get,” a senior CRPF official said.
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