Raipur:
Lack of a comprehensive security plan led to the massacre in Chhattisgarh which left 24 people, including top Congress leaders of the state, dead, revealed sources after a review by officials from the Union Home Ministry.
According to sources, instead of planning at a senior level, the security arrangements were left on individual police stations.
Also, top political leaders are advised not travel through such routes in a single convoy. Yet on Saturday evening, almost all the top leaders of the Congress' Chhattisgarh unit were travelling in the line of 25 cars returning together after the day's yatra in Sukma district.
"It was just a basic security cover. No comprehensive plan. 'Thanas' are informed whenever the yatra passed through a particular area. It does not work that way for such political activities," a security official said.
Besides, there should have been enough intelligence about the area and the Maoists there, if the yatra was to pass through it. "But it seems, there was no such arrangement," he
said.
In such regions, the police are supposed to sanitise roads and surrounding areas an hour before an important movement. However, there are reports that the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) had reportedly done this only three to four hours before.
That time reportedly allowed about 250 suspected Maoists, well-armed, to position themselves at the ambush site in the Dharma valley close to a forested area and ambush the convoy when it drove past.
Senior leaders Nand Kumar Patel and Mahendra Karma were shotdead in the attack while former union minister VC Shukla was criticallyinjured.
From the ground it appears that lapses by both - the security infrastructure and the politicians - made it easy for for the Maoist to strike.