In the biggest incident of its kind in years, at least 22 Indian security personnel were killed and 32 wounded in a major Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh, a senior police official confirmed on Sunday.

Ashok Juneja, the director-general of anti-Naxal Operations, Chhattisgarh, said 22 personnel were killed in a gunfight with Maoists in Bijapur on Saturday.

The Union Minister for Home Amit Shah, after paying his respects to the martyred security personnel, pointed out that, “in the past few years, the fight against Naxalism has reached a decisive turn and this unfortunate incident has taken this fight two steps forward. Both Central and state governments are working in tandem on two fronts, intensify development works in tribal areas and fight against armed groups. I want to assure people of Chhattisgarh and the country that fight against Naxals will be intensified after this incident,” he told the media.

The Director General of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) refuted the charges of intelligence failure behind the blood-soaked incident. “If it was a bait, more security personnel would have died. The Maoists would have set up an ambush at a place where we would have suffered maximum damage. We were moving through an area that is under their control and as such, they do have a tactical advantage there. They started firing at us with light machine guns when we were returning following our operation. The Security forces have fought valiantly,” he told the media.

According to the sources, there were dim intelligence inputs about the presence of the most wanted Maoist leader Madvi Hidma and his associate Sujatha in the area. Hidma was the target of the security forces' planned April 3 attack on the Maoists. They intended to capture Hidma along with his associates. But the Maoists, armed to the teeth with Light Machine Guns (LMG), were waiting in the foliage. They caught the Special Forces off guard. The fierce gun battle that ensued continued for over three hours.

According to local news channels Hidma, the man behind the massacre, is around 53 years old. He is known for his lethal ambushes executed by a pack of 180 to 250 Maoist fighters. Carrying a bounty of Rs 45 lakh, Hidma is accused in at least 26 attacks, including the 2013 Jhiram Ghati massacre of frontline Congress leaders. In the Burkapal ambush of April 2017, 24 CRPF personnel were killed in cold blood.

Hidma, the youngest member of the CPI (Maoists) supreme 21-membered central committee heads the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Battalion number one.  He apexed the group after the death of Maoist leader Ravula Srinivas better known as Ramanna, who had a bounty of Rs 1.4 crore on his head. 

Hidma is complemented by Sujatha, who is also in the most wanted list, and carries a reward of Rs 25 lakh on her head. Her husband Azad alias Koyda is also a Maoist leader. After the death of Ramanna, she was handling the affairs till Hidma was made commander. 

According to the Hindustan Times, the casualty numbers in the ambush on both sides were high as the encounter took place in the nerve centre of the Maoist operations, the Bijapur-Sukma area in the Bastar region. Since the Maoists used barrel grenade launchers in the attack, it resulted in several deaths, mainly due to splinter injuries. In turn, the security forces also retaliated with grenade launchers attached to automatic weapons, the daily said quoting officials.

Wireless intercepts indicated that the Maoists managed to track the movement of the security forces, but the Heron drone also picked up movements of multiple Maoist teams.

The bloody firefight broke out around 11.10am on Saturday, a firefight broke out between the forces and the Maoists, with both sides almost evenly matched. It began after around 400 Naxal "surprised and ambushed" the security forces by trapping them in a U-shaped area, said CRPF Director General Kuldeep Singh. Singh said that the "well-planned" attack was carried out by the Naxals using light machine guns (LMGs), desi rockets and small improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

According to the sources, that LMGs had been used by the Naxals might have been stolen from police forces in the past. A Pakistani hand is also suspected. In 2019, recovery of a Heckler & Koch G3 rifle from Maoists in Chhattisgarh had strengthened the suspicion that Maoists could be having links with Pakistani terrorists in Kashmir, supported and funded by Pakistani government.

The possible links of Maoists with Pakistan-backed terror groups had emerged during an investigation into a Naxal sympathiser case by Pune Police.