It’s often said that our teenage years or childhood are meant to be the best days of our lives, filled with innocence and joy. But, unfortunately for some children, it is marked by relentless hardships or the constant shadow of danger.
The life of this 13-year-old child, who has lost her left-leg to Maoist IED blast three weeks ago in Sukma already feels, she lives on a borrowed time.
As she continues to get treated in AIIMS Raipur, the child repeatedly asks these questions-‘How can I save myself from the next blast?’, ‘What was my mistake? ‘What wrong have I done? Will I get blown up again?’
These questions bring the chilling reality of the usage of IED’s by Maoists in Bastar- which spreads terror everywhere in its wake.
On May 26th morning, the 13-year-old child lost her leg to disguised Maoist IED, which was hidden underground, while collecting mahua fruits with her friends.
Despite her friends sustaining minor injuries, the child herself lost her left leg due to splinter injuries. She later fainted, and her aunt walked 16 km to confront the Maoists.
Upon learning that one of their IEDs had injured a minor, the Maoists later sent a medical team to her home. However, they initially insisted on treating her with ‘jadi-booti’. It was only, due to her grievous condition, which deteriorated to the point of near death that the Maoists allowed the family to take her to the hospital.
Later, when the word spread of minor’s injury, Chhattisgarh deputy CM & State’s home minister Vijay Sharma, admitted her to AIIMS-Raipur, where doctors managed to save her life, but they couldn’t save her leg.
Later, the deputy CM announced, that the minor will be provided with every help possible under govt’ rehabilitation plan, and he also declared, that they’ll try to find IED detection equipment and bolster human intelligence, to prevent these incidents.
Since the past six months, 4 civilians have lost their lives to Maoist IED blasts in Bastar. Besides common people, the armed forces have been killed and injured in 24 blasts happened so far.
Due to IED blasts alone, 58 army officers have lost their lives since the past 5 years and the livestock of people continue to get destroyed.
Speaking to TOI, IG P Sundarraj revealed, ‘Targeting security forces through IEDs is one of the oldest tactics of the banned CPI(Maoist) outfit. Countless precious lives have been lost, both among security personnel and innocent civilians. The loss of limbs and eyes in such explosions causes unimaginable lifelong trauma to survivors of IED blasts.’
But talking about the current situation, retd brigadier Basant Ponwar said,
‘The situation is much better now than earlier when sniffer dogs didn’t know how to detect gunpowder. The first batch of sniffer dogs detected more than 550 IEDs in their lifetime, which means if one IED can kill five people, the recovery of 550 has saved hundreds of lives.’
But the counter-insurgency specialist warned, that even IEDs made of normal steel box, buried 2-3 inches below the surface is enough to kill people.