Raipur, Sep 26 (IANS) Suspected Maoists in Chhattisgarh Saturday shot two sons of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Bastar MP Baliram Kashyap, killing one of them, police said.
“Maoists fired several rounds at Kashyap’s sons, Dinesh and Tansen, when they were at a Mahashthami Durga Puja celebration in Bastar district,” a top police official told IANS.

The incident took place in a temple in Bhanpuri area of Bastar, some 300 km south of here.

Four Maoists, described by eyewitnesses as minors, opened fire minutes after Kashyap’s another son Kedar, a state cabinet minister, left the temple with his security guards. The four rebels managed to escape.

According to a family source: “The two were rushed to Maharani Hospital in Jagdalpur with multiple bullet wounds where Tansen succumbed to his injuries. Dinesh is reportedly out of danger.”

Kashyap, a four-term MP who was also a state minister in undivided Madhya Pradesh, and his family members have been on the hit-list of the Maoists for years, mainly for their open support to a controversial government-backed civil militia movement — Salwa Judum.

Salwa Judum aims to flush out the Maoists from Bastar where the Leftists radicals have held sway since the late 1980s.