Thirty-five Naxals were gunned down by security forces while 32 civilians were killed in Maoist-related incidents.
On February 28, Naxals targeted a police patrolling party and killed five personnel, including a Station House Officer (SHO) in Dantewada.
With the pain of the attack yet to die down, the outlawed rebels carried another ambush, the deadliest of the year, killing 11 CRPF personnel, four state police jawans and a civilian on March 11 in Tongpal area of Sukma.
The twin attacks in a span of around 10 days, were an alarming indication for the security forces as the Lok Sabha elections were scheduled to be held in the state in April. Two days after polling in Bastar region for general elections, seven members of a polling party and five CRPF personnel were among 13 killed as Naxals struck twice on April 12 in a gap of less than an hour, blowing up a bus carrying polling parties and an ambulance in Bijapur and Bastar districts respectively.
Paramilitaries suffered another blow in the last month of the year as they lost 13 CRPF personnel on December 1 in a Maoist attack in a dense forest of Chintagufa in Sukma prompting the opposition Congress to raise question over state's strategy to take on menace of Naxalism.
The attack once again forced the state machinery to revamp its security measure in naxal dominated region and review its anti-Naxal strategies.
However, there was a controversy when the blood stained uniforms of the deceased CRPF jawans were found in a garbage dump outside a hospital where their postmortem was done. Facing flak from all quarters, the state government ordered a magisterial enquiry while CRPF also ordered a probe.
"We know we have lost a large number of our men this year in counter insurgency operations but the morale of the forces are high as they have penetrated into those core areas of Maoists in Bastar where security personnel had never dared to enter," a senior police official told PTI.
"734 Naxals were arrested and 394 cadres, most of them lower rung members, surrendered so far this year," he said.
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