Ten security personnel and their driver were killed on Wednesday when their mini-van was blown up in an explosion suspected to have been carried out by Maoists in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh.

This is the highest casualty the security forces have suffered in a Maoist attack since April 2021 when 22 jawans were killed in an ambush in the state.

Sources said the attack took place when the 10 policemen were returning from an anti-Maoist operation that was launched following intelligence inputs. The policemen belonged to the District Reserve Guard (DRG), a special force of the Chhattisgarh police that is mostly made up of local tribals who have been trained to conduct anti-Maoist operations.

The site of the improvised explosive device blast is around 450km from state capital Raipur and falls under Aranpur police station. The explosion took place around 1pm when the DRG team was out on an anti-Naxalite operation, inspector-general of police (Bastar range) Sundarraj P. said.

Visuals from a local news channel showed a huge crater, almost 10-feet deep, splitting the road at the site. The vehicle was completely destroyed in the attack while bodies covered with plastic sheets were seen in the video.

The security personnel had set out from the Dantewada district headquarters after getting information about the presence of Maoists belonging to the Darbha division in the area. The jawans were on their way back when the Maoists blew up their mini-van between Aranpur and Sameli villages, the IGP said.

The 10 DRG jawans and the civilian driver were killed on the spot.

Sources in the Union home ministry said a recent intelligence report had suggested that Maoists were regrouping in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and posed a new challenge for security agencies.

Asked about the Narendra Modi government’s earlier claim that demonetisation had choked funds for the Maoists and broken their backbone, a former CRPF director said: “There is a big difference between tall claims and ground reality. Maoists have been a big internal threat and they pose a new challenge, considering that they are again regrouping themselves in some states.”

Seven districts of Chhattisgarh — Bastar, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Kanker, Sukma, Dantewada and Kondagaon — are worst affected by Left-wing extremism.

According to an Intelligence Bureau report, the extremists exercise complete control of the forested area of Abujhmad in Chhattisgarh where they have set up several camps that provide arms training to recruits.

An IB official said Abujhmad was a liberated zone and had become a Maoist hotbed. The insurgents hold regular meetings with their cadres in the presence of the top-rung leaders and also plan and execute attacks on security forces from there.