Pledging to intensify the battle against Maoists, Union home Minister Amit Shah said that “we will win it in the end,” two days after the anti-Naxal encounter that killed 22 security personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region.
“On behalf of the Prime Minister, central government and the country, I pay tributes to the security personnel who lost their lives in the Maoist attack. The country will always remember their sacrifice for taking this fight to a decisive turn,” Shah said.
After chairing a review meeting with Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and senior officers after arriving in Jagdalpur on Monday morning, Amit Shah while speaking to the media said, “In the past few years, the fight against Maoists has reached a decisive turn and this unfortunate incident has taken this fight two steps forwards.”
He further added that in the review meeting the officers said that the fight shouldn’t weaken, to which Shah believes that the “morale of our jawans is intact.”
Terming the bloody Maoist attack to the security forces' success over the last few years, Shah said that the security forces have been victorious in making inroads into the densely forested Bastar region, underlining that this had frightened the Maoists who carried out Saturday’s attack.
Both Shah and Baghel were in the northeastern state of Assam, campaigning for their respective parties for the ongoing assembly elections when the attack took place. On Sunday, Shah immediately returned to New Delhi while Baghel returned to Raipur, the state capital.
In Jagdalpur, both leaders also paid tributes to the soldiers who got martyred in the encounter. Later in the day, Shah will meet the injured jawans at a hospital in Raipur.
Also read: UP Police team to reach Punjab today to get Mukhtar Ansari
Shah said that "I want to assure the martyrs' families and the country that the sacrifices that the soldiers have made for the country will not go in vain".
In a major Maoist attack this year, a total of 22 security personnel were killed and 31 injured in a fierce gun battle with a platoon of over 300 People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district.