A routine search-and-destroy mission turned into a national tragedy on Saturday morning as four personnel from the Chhattisgarh Police’s District Reserve Guard (DRG) were killed in a powerful explosion. The incident occurred around 11:30 AM in the dense Aadnar forest, located near the Kanker-Narayanpur border, marking a somber moment for the state’s security forces just a month after the region was declared largely free of active Maoist insurgencies.
The elite team, led by the highly decorated Inspector Sukhram Vatti, was conducting a de-mining operation under the Chhotebethiya police station limits. Acting on specific intelligence about a hidden cache, the commandos discovered a dump of explosive materials and gunpowder previously stashed by Maoists. While the team was following standard protocols to safely extract and defuse the materials, the cache detonated unexpectedly. Initial reports from the Bastar Range police suggest that high ambient temperatures and a volatile chemical reaction within the gunpowder sacks may have triggered the accidental blast.
The explosion was so severe that Inspector Vatti (40), along with Constable Krishna Komra (35) and Constable Sanjay Gadhpale (29), died on the spot. A fourth member, Constable Parmanand Komra (29), was critically injured and airlifted to a specialized hospital in Raipur, where he later succumbed to his wounds. Inspector Vatti was a particularly revered figure in the force, known for his rapid rise through the ranks due to his success in neutralising hundreds of IEDs in the Abujhmad region over the past decade.
Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai expressed deep grief over the loss, describing the four men as "brave-hearts who made the supreme sacrifice in the line of duty." IG Bastar P. Sundarraj emphasized that while the incident was a "tragic accident," it underscores the lingering dangers of dormant explosive traps hidden in former conflict zones.
A specialized forensic and ballistic team has been dispatched to Aadnar to determine why the defusal process failed. As the state pays its respects to the fallen commandos, security forces have launched a massive "sanitization" sweep across the Kanker-Narayanpur border to ensure no further hidden dumps pose a threat to either personnel or local villagers in the height of the summer heat.
