Echoes of Communist Terror : Dantewada Bus Bombing of 2010

On the afternoon of 17 May, a private passenger bus leaving Sukma was attacked by Maoists with an IED blast, in which 44 people were killed. Of those killed, 18 were SPO soldiers, while the other 26 were civilians, including women and children.

The Narrative World    19-May-2024   
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At present, when continuous aggressive operations are being carried out against Maoists in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, it is being discussed everywhere that the end of Maoists is near.


These discussions have gained more momentum as more than 100 Maoists have been killed and more than 200 have been arrested in the last four months.


But there was a time when Maoists openly attacked the force and massacred civilians. Today we are going to talk about that time when Maoists used to openly and continuously attack security forces, and the then central government only talked about making new policies and strategies.


This was the period when Maoists were carrying out terrorist incidents one after the other in different parts of the country, while the Manmohan Singh government in power could not formulate any strategy to deal with them. An incident of the same type took place on May 17, 2010. On this day, Maoists had massacred the common people of Bastar.


“This incident happened exactly 6 weeks after the biggest Maoist terrorist attack in the country. Dantewada district, located in the south of Bastar, which had witnessed the massacre by Maoists in Tadmetla just a few weeks ago, was living in silence under the shadow of terror. In the same Dantewada, Maoists carried out another major incident.”

 


On the afternoon of 17 May, a private passenger bus leaving Sukma was attacked by Maoists with an IED blast, in which 44 people were killed. Of those killed, 18 were SPO soldiers, while the other 26 were civilians, including women and children.


It was a private bus in which civilians traveled, but the Maoists had tasted the blood of civilians, and as a result, Communist terrorists of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) attacked the bus full of civilians and Massacred 44 people. 

 

To carry out this incident, Maoists had already planted explosives on the road. This attack was carried out in the inner road of Chingavaram. The scale of the attack can be understood from the fact that a 10 feet crater was formed at the place where the attack took place.


This information also came to light during that time that the District Superintendent of Police and other police officers had passed by the place of attack only 10 minutes earlier. After this attack, help was immediately sought from the nearby CRPF camp, after which there was sporadic firing between the soldiers and the Maoists.


One of the then top police officers of Chhattisgarh had given a statement in the media saying, 'Who would have thought that Maoists would also target civilians like this?'


Former Army Brigadier and then Director of Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College located in Kanker, BK Panwar, while talking to the media, had said that 'Maoists definitely have a map of IED explosives, as does the Army. These explosives were not planted overnight. It was probably placed when the road was being constructed.


It is noteworthy that just 6 weeks before this attack, Maoists had carried out the biggest terrorist attack till date in Tadmetla area of the then Dantewada district, in which communist terrorists had massacred 76 soldiers.


Even after such a big attack, the then central government did not take any major action towards ending Maoist terrorism, nor did it modernize the force so that it could counter the guerrilla war of Maoists in these dense forests.


“Due to the 'policy paralysis' of the Congress government, the Maoists had become so emboldened that first they massacred 76 soldiers on April 6, 2010, and then on May 8, 2010, the Maoists destroyed a CRPF bullet proof vehicle in Bijapur. Blown up by bomb, in which 8 soldiers were sacrificed. At the same time, two days before the bus attack, Maoists had killed a total of 6 villagers including a sarpanch and thrown their bodies.”

 


Even after carrying out so many incidents, Maoists once again committed a terrorist incident and this time targeted a bus full of civilians, due to which 44 people were killed.


It is also important to know what was the attitude of the central government and media after this incident. On one hand, the Congress government at the Center was pretending to review the Naxal policy and strategy, while on the other hand, a narrative was being created by the communist media that not the Maoists but the SPO soldiers were responsible for this attack.


NDTV's report on this incident said that 'The SPO personnel who were traveling in the bus were part of the Naxal operation that took place a few days before the incident, in which 2 Maoists were killed. But the local commander of Maoists, Ganesh, was saved in this operation.


NDTV reported that some soldiers boarded a bus after the operation. The Maoists getting this information shows their better intelligence and network of contacts. We all know how NDTV during that time created a narrative for the communist lobby through one-sided journalism.


Apart from NDTV, Times of India, quoting an 'unknown source', had written that 'Maoists were aware of the movement of soldiers, of which they have taken advantage. The soldiers violated the operation procedure and boarded the bus.


“Let us assume that the soldiers violated some procedure while sitting in the bus, but will this make it false that Maoists carried out a terrorist attack on a bus full of civilians, in which 44 people were killed? Was the media engaged in setting the narrative that this attack was not a terrorist act carried out by Maoists, but was the mistake of the soldiers?”

 


Actually, all this was happening in front of our eyes, but we were so manipulated by the urban Naxalites and communists that we have forgotten these massacres committed by the Maoist terrorists.


This is the reason that even today there is a section in the society which feels that the Maoists are fighting a war of Jal-Jungle-Jameen, but the reality is that the Maoists are targeting the same innocent tribes in whose name they are talking about the so-called revolution.

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