Raipur:
In a rare gesture, two Chhattisgarh policemen donated blood to save the life of a Maoist who sustained a bullet injury during a gunfight in the state's restive Bastar region, an officer said on Tuesday.
30-year-old Madvi Mangu was among the two rebels captured after a gun battle in a forested area of Bijapur, some 450 km south of capital Raipur. Mangu, who was hit by a bullet, was admitted to a local government hospital but doctors referred him to Maharani Hospital at Jagdalpur town, the headquarters of Bastar region.
"The tribal militant had excess bleeding and was in desperate need of B-positive blood. Doctors said he would die if blood was not arranged urgently on Sunday," Superintendent of Police (Bastar) P. Sundarraj told IANS.
"Two constables - Chaganlal Daharia and Hari Singh Thakur - posted at Jagdalpur town, immediately agreed to donate blood and finally saved his life. Now doctors say the militant is out of danger," the police officer said.
Daharia told IANS over phone from Jagdalpur: "It was a decision linked to someone's life and I had to take it in a flash though he belonged to an insurgent group that has massacred so many of our colleagues in the past several years. But I thought I should not inherit their (Maoists) culture based on brutality and inhumanity and donated blood."
Daharia, who is posted in the Jagdalpur police lines, said that the Maoist, who had received just one bullet in his right elbow, was in severe pain and was begging for his life at the Maharani Hospital.
Mangu is recovering well but authorities plan to send him to Raipur for advanced treatment. The rebel thanked the policemen who donated blood and promised to work for peace in Bastar region, troubled by Maoist militancy for about three decades, police said.
"The Maoist broke down when he came to know that the police whom he was recruited to kill, saved his life," Daharia added.
The rebel was active as a senior cadre of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) for over five years in the Bastar region, spread over a 40,000 sq km area. Bastar comprises five districts - Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Bastar and Kanker - and is considered the nerve centre of the Maoists.