It took 3 hours for medical attention to reach children

NAGPUR: After being caught in the crossfire between the Naxals and the Indo Tibetan Border Police in Sawargaon village on the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border on Friday, the 11 injured schoolchildren got complete medical attention only after being brought to Gadchiroli, around eight hours after the incident started.
While two students died on the spot, the only one who was brought to a Nagpur hospital succumbed to injuries late on Friday.Three ITBP personnel died after the Naxals tried to blow up a bridge connecting the two states and destroyed a jeep carrying a small team. DG Gawade, a woman cook, and Manglarama Marapi, a villager, too were among the casualties after the battle moved to an adjacent ashramshala.
Neither the well-equipped security personnel, the district administration nor the villagers were ready to enter the school and reach out to the children crying in pain. They feared that the Naxals may have booby-trapped the bodies by planting pressure bombs under them.
"Bodies remain untouched for nearly two days as nobody has the courage to touch them. It's become a regular practice now," said a source in Gadchiroli. "Eventually the villagers have to do the needful."
TOI learns that the bodies of those slain in Sawargaon were not removed until early Saturday morning.
Those residential students, who were lucky to escape unhurt, are likely to have remained hungry for many hours as the incident took place at 11.30am. The gun-battle between ITBP and the Naxals, which continued for more than three hours, kept both the police and the villagers away from the spot until 3pm. The injured students were rushed to Murumgaon public health centre, around 16 kilometres away, at 3.30pm for first aid.
While six children were kept in Murumgaon itself, the five seriously injured could be shifted to Gadchiroli district hospital only at 7.30pm where they were given better treatment. Std I student Mukesh Potavi, who was the most critically injured, was shifted to a private hospital in Nagpur in an ambulance apparently arranged by villagers. The ambulance left Gadchiroli at 7.45pm and reached Nagpur at 11.30pm by which time Mukesh had already succumbed to his injuries.
The people of Sawargaon, which is about 80 kms from Gadchiroli town, could not render any help to the victims as the gun battle was taking place in the middle of the village where the Naxals were trying to take refuge from the ITBP personnel which had regrouped from their camp in Kohka village in Rajnandgaon district of Chhattisgarh.
"Nobody was willing to go to Sawargaon to ferry the injured," said the person who accompanied Mukesh to Nagpur. "Finally, we managed to hire a vegetable trader's vehicle."
The surviving students must have gone through a harrowing time, according to a local source. "They had to spend a lot of time with the mutilated bodies," he said.
DG Gawade, the cook, was apparently sweeping the premises to get ready to serve lunch to the children. Two students, who too died on the spot, were playing in the premises. There was complete chaos and panic after the shell exploded in the school.
This was Gadchiroli's worst civilian casualty after May 2006 when a dozen in a marriage party were killed in a mine blast close to Halewada village in Etapalli taluka.