A landmine blast by suspected Maoists in Sukma village in Chhattisgarh has claimed the lives of two persons and left eight Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel injured.
Chhattisgarh's Director General of Police A.N.Upadhyay told media here on Sunday:"After travelling ten kilometers, the CRPF army men saw something suspicious at one spot. A bomb exploded while they were investigating the location. In the blast, two army men died and eight were injured."
The DGP claimed the incident to be a Maoist attack.
However, Chhattisgarh Additional Directorate General (ADG) of police intelligence, Mukesh Gupta, denied the DGP's claim.
"The incident in which our CRPF army men got injured was a bomb blast and not a Maoist encounter," Gupta said.
The injured have been admitted to a hospital in Raipur where they are undergoing treatment and are still under observation.
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The Maoists, who say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless, control some of India's mineral-rich areas and operate in large swathes of the eastern, central and southern countryside.
The Maoists, also known as Naxals, have killed police and politicians, and targeted government buildings and railway tracks in an insurgency that has killed thousands since the 1960s.
The rebels are estimated to number 7,000 hardcore fighters in nearly a third of India's 630 districts.