NEW DELHI: Veteran Congress leader V C Shukla might well have met the same fate as his party colleagues Mahendra Karma and Nand Kumar Patel had it not been for his quick thinking driver’s ability to speak Telugu .

Speaking to TOI from Raipur, Bala, who survived the attack with a bullet wound, said he began shouting in Telugu as the heavily armed Maoists approached the SUV – a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado – claiming that Shukla was a businessman returning from Andhra Pradesh.

The driver, who has been with Shukla for almost 10 years, hid the former Union minister’s identity and maintained that Shukla was his ‘Seth’ caught in the Congress cavalcade but wasn’t a politician.

It is unclear how far the Maoists bought Bala’s story but his speaking in Telugu might have had an effect on the Naxal leaders who are believed to be from Andhra Pradesh.

In the event, the extremists spared a profusely bleeding Shukla when they pulled him out of the vehicle, refraining from injuring him further, unlike Patel and Karma who were found dead with several rounds of bullets fired into them.

Bala narrated the sequence of events that ended in the carnage at Darbha. He said Shukla started a good half-an-hour after the cavalcade with other leaders left the Sukma rest house .

“As we neared Jheerum ghati and began climbing it, we heard gun shots from behind and realized someone was firing at our vehicle tyres. Vidya bhaiyya asked me to speed up but we were fired at on every curve,” Bala said.

“Within minutes, we reached the cavalcade of vehicles of other leaders which was under heavy fire from all directions. With our SUV stuck in the narrow space, Vidya bhaiyya asked his PSO to jump out of the car and escape. Instead, the PSO took position below the vehicle and began shooting,” Bala said.

“VC asked us all to remain still and show no movement. We could see Naxals scanning each vehicle through binoculars from hill tops. But the firing continued, a bullet grazed me and hit VC. He was hit by more bullets which pierced the SUV,” Bala recounted.

He said that from his reclined driver’s seat, he could see and hear the Maoists who checked every vehicle, yanked out survivors, took some into the jungle, shot some and asked others to run off.

“As they neared our vehicle, I jumped out and shouted in Telugu not to shoot us. I told them I didn’t know Hindi, could only speak in Telugu and my ‘Seth’ and other elders were inside, he was a businessman returning from Andhra Pradesh. I pleaded they should spare us,” Bala recalled.

Bala was marched off into the jungle where the extremists questioned him about his Andhra links. They instructed him to remain in the jungle while a team went back to the SUV, pulled out a dazed and bleeding Shukla and left him on the ground. Neither he nor other occupants of the car were attacked further while the PSO had already shot himself after he apparently apologized to Shukla for not being able to save him.

It was almost two hours later when the rescue team led by the district SP arrived that Bala informed him that Shukla lay bleeding in his car.

“The Naxals took away our mobiles. The SUV was in no position to move. The SP asked me to carry Shukla and other wounded in any vehicle of the convoy which could move so that he could be shifted to the ambulance stationed 2 km away. I then called Shukla’s relative who is a doctor and Vaibhav Mishra in Raipur, his close aide. Later, I accompanied him to Raipur when he was airlifted,” Bala said, adding he still could not believe he survived.