Lying flat in a ditch, bullets hissing above him, Mormukut Sharma decided to record a message for the one person he loved most.

“Mummy, I love you. I may be killed in this attack... I feel no fear,” the Doordarshan employee murmured into his microphone as his TV camera captured the sights and sounds of the police-Maoist gun battle.

Sharma, 35, a lighting assistant with DD News, and journalist Dhiraj Kumar survived the one-hour gunfight that followed an ambush of a police convoy in Chattisgarh’s Dantewada district on Tuesday. But a colleague, cameraman Achyutanand Sahu, died.

The three-member crew from Delhi was in the state to cover next month’s Assembly polls and had joined a police team travelling on motorcycles through a forest on their way to Nilawaya village, 450km from Raipur.

“There is a terror attack. We are in Dantewada for election coverage. While on the way, accompanied by the army (sic), we were suddenly ambushed by Naxals,” Sharma says in the message to his mother, which Doordarshan has posted on Twitter.

Amid the crackle and hiss of gunfire, he is heard saying: “We are surrounded from all sides. It is difficult to survive in this situation. There are six to seven jawans.”

He adds: “Mummy, if I survive, I will be thankful. Mummy, I love you. I may be killed in this attack. The situation is not good. Don’t know why, despite staring at death, I feel no fear.”