India, June 10 -- Akash Rao Girepunje, additional superintendent of police Akash Rao Girepunje was killed in a Naxal-planted IED blast in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district on Monday, just two days before his daughter's sixth birthday.

The 42-year-old officer, posted in the insurgency-hit Konta division of Sukma since March 2024, was critically injured when a pressure-IED exploded during a patrol in the Konta area. He succumbed at a hospital shortly after. Two other police personnel were also injured in the explosion.

Girepunje, a native of Raipur, had planned to visit his in-laws' house in Bhandara, Maharashtra, for his daughter's birthday on June 11. "He had promised his daughter he would be there, no matter what," said his younger brother...