Troops failed to follow combing plan,ended up as sitting ducks

As former BSF DG E N Rammohan on Saturday began the inquiry into the Dantewada massacre,with a meeting with CRPF Director General Vikram Srivastava in New Delhi...

As former BSF DG E N Rammohan on Saturday began the inquiry into the Dantewada massacre,with a meeting with CRPF Director General Vikram Srivastava in New Delhi,evidence has started emerging of gaps in command and control in the ill-fated 62 Battalion.

The Sunday Express has learnt that internal inquiries by the CRPF show that the company,headed by Deputy Commandant Satyavan Singh Yadav,who was also killed,digressed from the task given to them,with a local village mukhiya organising the night stay for them before they met their fate.

Consider this:

 On March 29,2010,DIG (CRPF) Nalin Prabhat,a 1992-batch Andhra Pradesh IPS officer,took over the Dantewada sector and chalked out an area domination exercise with State Zonal Inspector General and local SP. The task was to launch nine CRPF teams on April 4 for a three-day area domination exercise,a precursor to a planned Naxal Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign on April 15. Prabhat is an anti-Naxal specialist who once operated in Andhra Pradesh,and has also done a stint in J&K. The patrol details of the nine teams and the coordination meetings are all on paper.

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 Apart from Yadav,an assistant commandant of the incoming relieving company and remnants of the old company took over charge of the teams. The idea was to familiarise the new company with the area in Chintalnar forests.

 There was an intelligence alert on April 5,communicated to the state police with a copy to the CRPF,from Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau,Raipur,stating that there was Naxal movement in the area and the guerrillas could lay siege to the district headquarters.

The state police had information that the Maoists were planning to step up their campaign resorting to largescale violence and destruction of bridges,culverts and other infrastructure… a period of total mayhem, senior police sources claimed.

 The 62 Battalion was tasked to move at 7 pm on Day 1 (April 4) and proceed north-west of Chintalnar. It was supposed to take a night halt and then move vertical down south on Day 2 (3 km actually from where they met their end) with a night halt on April 5,and to proceed east on April 6 and arrive back in the camp the same night.

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It now transpires that the personnel did not reach the designated spots at the time fixed,indicating a command and control failure with the troopers roaming around largely aimlessly in Chintalnar,thus exposing themselves to Maoists.

Inspector General of Police (Bastar range) T J Longkumer,Dantewada District Superintendent of Police Ambareesh Mishra and senior CRPF officials jointly took the decision to launch the combing operation in the forests as it was the mandate of security forces to keep the enemy at bay. CRPF DIG Nalin Prabhat confirmed this. The Rammohan inquiry will probe if the team violated the standard operating procedure. There are also plans to review the four-six week training given by the Army.

When contacted by The Sunday Express,CRPF DIG Nalin Prabhat said the decision to launch a campaign for area domination was taken jointly by the state police and CRPF as per the guidelines. However,he refused to elaborate,saying the government has already set up a high-level independent committee to inquire into the circumstances.

with inputs from Joseph John