Also known as Naxals, the Maoists have battled the government for decades in a huge swathe of central India and say they are fighting for people left out of a long economic boom in Asia’s third largest economy.
The government considers them India’s biggest internal security threat.
The personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)were traveling on a bus clearing mines in a forested region known for Maoist activity when the blast hit, a police spokesman said.
“They were part of a road opening party, clearing the path of mines and other obstacles before an operation, and unfortunately they got tangled up in this,” the spokesman said.
The injured and dead were evacuated by helicopter to a nearby town, Gadchiroli, about 1000 km (600 miles) east of Mumbai, India’s financial hub and the capital of Maharashtra. Television reports earlier said 15 policemen had died in a blast attributed to a land mine.
On Sunday, a different group of Maoists in the eastern state of Orissa released an Italian tourist they had held hostage for nearly two weeks, in what was believed to be the first kidnapping of foreigners in the conflict. Another Italian and a local politician were still being held.
The government says the fighters are an obstacle to higher growth and more jobs. Hundreds die annually in the conflict, although levels of violence have fallen in recent years.
