Chhattisgarh: Naxals kill mentally challenged man on suspicion of being informer

Naxals killed a 38-year-old mentally challenged man in a village in Chhattsigarh’s Bijapur district while accusing him of acting as a police informer, a senior police official said on Sunday.

A group of Maoist janmilitia members on Saturday night dragged the victim, identified as Hemant Bandi, out of his house in Timmapur village under Basaguda police station limits, located about 400 km from the state capital Raipur, and brutally killed him with sharp-edged weapons, he said.

After being alerted, a team of security personnel rushed to the spot on Sunday morning. The body is being shifted to Basaguda for postmortem, he said.

Maoists claimed Bandi had informed police about their location ahead of an encounter in 2018, the official said. The deceased had been suffering from a mental illness for several years and usually remained at home, the official said, denying the victim’s association with police.

A search operation has been launched in the area to trace the assailants, he added.