RAIPUR - Two special police officers (SPOs) were injured Tuesday in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district when Maoist insurgents ambushed a contingent of some 300 policemen, officials said.

The incident took place in the early hours Tuesday in Gorkha village in the state’s restive Bastar region when a team of District Force and SPOs was on its way to Gachanpalli village to find 12 missing persons on the order of the Supreme Court, officials here at police headquarters told IANS.

The police contingent that left for the thickly forested village from Injeram base camp, some 500 km south from state capital Raipur, after 10 p.m. Monday came under Maoists attack at about 5 a.m. Tuesday when it had reached Gorkha village.

Police officials said the SPOs who were guiding the contingent in the deep forest sustained injuries when they stepped on a landmine. Other policemen who were following them returned fire but the insurgents managed to escape into the nearby forest under the cover of darkness.

“The landmine blast removed a leg of SPO Hariram and his second leg too was severely hit. He was rushed to the nearest primary health centre at Konta and then air-lifted to Maharani Hospital at Jagdalpur, headquarters of Bastar region. The condition of the second SPO, who is also said to be injured, is not known,” sources here at the headquarters said.

Taking serious note of the allegations that the Chhattisgarh police had abducted 12 people for moving the court against the killings of their relatives, a bench of the apex court, Justice B. Sudershan Reddy and Justice S.S. Nijjar, ordered the state government Feb 8 to locate the missing people and present them before it by Feb 15.