New Delhi: Even as the government prepares for its major offensive against the Naxals, there has been another audacious attack in Chattisgarh.
This time the target was Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Bastar, Baliram Kashyap and his family.
Four suspected Maoists gunned down Baliram Kashyap's son Tansen, while another son Dinesh was critically injured in the firing.
However, the MP who was the prime target of the rebels escaped unhurt.
The attack comes a day after Union Home Minister P Chidambaram's visit to Chhattisgarh.
Inspector General of Police RK Viz said, "Maoists fired several rounds at Kashyap's sons, Dinesh and Tansen, when they were at a temple performing Mahashtami Durga Puja in their ancestral village Gharguda in Bastar district."
According to an eye witness account, four Maoists opened fire minutes after Kashyap's another son Kedar, a state cabinet minister, left the temple with his security guards. The attackers managed to escape in their cycles. The two were rushed to Maharani Hospital in Jagdalpur with multiple bullet wounds, where Tansen succumbed to his injuries.
Baliram Kashyap, a four-term MP and his family members have been on the hit-list of the Maoists, mainly for their open support to a controversial government-backed civil militia movement Salwa Judum, a programnme launched in June 2005 to flush out the Maoists from the state's mineral rich Bastar region where the Leftist radicals have held sway since the late 1980s.
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