A forest area in Etapalli in Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra saw an encounter between the Naxals and a special unit of the security forces in Gadchiroli-Gondia known as the C-60 squad.
Sandip Patil, Inspector General of Police (IGP) of Gadchiroli Gondia Range had confirmed about the encounter, as it went on in the forest in the morning.
IGP Patil added, “Based on specific inputs, the police party, comprising C-60 commandos, had launched a search operation in the forest.”
At around, 5:30 am on Friday morning, in Paydi-Kotmi forest region, the encounter broke out when Naxals had gathered for a meeting. Gadchiroli police had received a tip about the meeting in the Paodi(Paydi-Kotmi) forest region. Thirteen Naxals belonging to the Kasansur Dalam group were killed in the encounter with the security forces. The dead include six men and seven women as confirmed by the Maharastra Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil.
In an earlier encounter, in May 2020, between C-60 commandos of Gadchiroli police and Naxals, a woman ultra, Srujanakka (48), was killed. She was the divisional committee member of Kasansur dalam.
The Naxals in Gadchiroli region are known to make money by extortion out of the trade of Tendu leaves in the region. The Tendu leaves are used in beedi production. Home Minister Patil said that the meeting was between the Naxals and the Tendu leaf contractors, a tip on which was received by the C-60 squad of police.
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SP Gadchiroli district, Ankit Goyal said that the police had reached the site of the meeting after getting tip from its informers and had covered the region. The Naxals, realizing that they were being covered by the security personnel started firing, and the C-60 squad fired in retaliation, in which 13 ultras died, said SP Gadchiroli. The encounter lasted for around an hour.
After the encounter, the state police recovered a cache of arms which included AK-47 rifles, and SLR gun, carbine, .303, 12 bore guns, and explosives from the site. After the encounter, search operations are underway in the region as more Naxal-ultras could be in hiding in and around the encounter site.
Moment of genesis for C-60 squad
The C-60 unit has been tasked with countering the Maoist violence in Maharashtra, just like the Greyhound forces in Telangana, the SOG special units in Andhra Pradesh, and COBRA units for multiple states, like Assam, WB, Karnataka, MP, Odisha, & Maharashtra.
Naxalite movement entered in the regions of Maharashtra like Gadchiroli, in the 1980s from the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. KP Raghuvanshi, a veteran cop, was given the responsibility of creating an elite commando force in the state police in 1990, which was the moment of genesis for C-60 squad. After the death of Hemant Karkare in the 26/11 attacks, Raghuvanshi was made the head of the Mumbai ATS.
The specialty of the C-60 unit was that it was made of 60 commandos recruited from the same region, from where the Naxals enlisted their ultras. This gave the C-60, a terrain advantage, benefit of the ability of conversing with the local populace, faster movement and maneuvering, which became tremendous operational advantages with regards to other units of the state police. In 1994, a second unit of the C-60 was created.
This unit is trained and qualified to fight in rough terrains and tough battlegrounds like the regions of dense forests spread over hilly slopes.
It is worthwhile to note that other than combating the Naxal-ultras, the C-60 unit also carries out the task of bringing in the surrendered Naxals into the mainstream population, by making such ultras and former-Naxals aware of the schemes of the government-mandated for them (former ultras).
The Jungle Warfare College, Kanker, National Security Guard campus, Manesar, the Police Training Centre, Hazaribagh, and the Unconventional Operation Training Center, Nagpur are some of the institutions which train the elite C-60 unit.
