india

Updated: May 09, 2019 00:11 IST

At least seven Maoists were gunned down in two separate encounters with security personnel in Koraput district of Odisha and Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh on Wednesday, police said.

The Koraput encounter took place in a forest under Padua police station limits in the morning when Special Operations Group (SOG) and District Voluntary Force (DVF) personnel were conducting a combing operation in the area.

“The Maoists fired at the SOG and DVF men after noticing them, and the security personnel retaliated the fire, killing five,” an official said. “Of the five Maoists killed in the encounter, three were women,” the ADGP (operations) RP Koche said. The security forces began the combing operation following a tip-off that around 15 Maoists were hiding in the forest, officials said.

Two Maoists, including a woman, were killed in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region in an early morning gun battle with security forces. The encounter took place at the border of Malangir and Katekalyan area committees of the CPI (Maoist), where their cadres were present.

“The encounter took place at around 4:45am in Gonderas village when a team of District Reserve Guard (DRG) and the Special Task Force (STF) was out on an anti-Maoist operation in the jungles,” Dantewada’s superintendent of police Abhishek Pallava said.