Word: chhattisgarh
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...undulating hills and thick vegetation of Dandakaranya Forest - nearly 50,000 sq km of jungle straddling parts of central-Indian states Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra and the southern state of Andhra Pradesh - have for decades been a forsaken, off-the-map region frequented only by corporate India looking to make a killing from the iron-ore reserves of the land. Indeed, for close to 10 years now, the area has remained off limits for the Indian government and its agencies, including the police and military. It is one of the few pockets of India that has not been topographically surveyed...
While admitting that it lost eight fighters in the three-hour attack, a Maoist spokesman justified the massacre in a three-page faxed statement, saying, "The CRPF battalion deployed in [Chhattisgarh] were killing innocent people, burning villages, raping women and displacing ... people. We also wanted to take revenge of the killing of our top leaders." (See how India's schools have been caught in the cross-fire in the fight against the Maoists...
...gave out his cell-phone number to Chidambaram to facilitate talks. "But actually they were retreating so that they can regroup. This is how the Maoists always operate. But still we have not learned anything," says K.P.S. Gill, formerly one of India's top police officers, who advised the Chhattisgarh government in a previous anti-Maoist operation...
...Chhattisgarh's director general of police, Vishwa Ranjan, admits that "the [paramilitary] forces need to be trained specifically for this, which unfortunately we don't do. It's time all of us sit up and act." Still, he insists that he is "prepared to take casualties." He tells TIME, "We are in a war. And no war is won without people dying...