A day after an armed Maoist ambush left several top Chhatisgarh Congress leaders dead, the police on Sunday recovered the bullet-ridden bodies of state party president Nand Kumar Patel and his son Dinesh, along with those of eight others, from Jiram valley in Bastar.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi met state  Patel's family members at Devendra Nagar in state capital Raipur on Sunday morning and expressed his condolence over the demise of the senior party leader.

Prime minister Manmoham Singh and Congress party president Sonia Gandhi also arrived in Raipur on Sunday. They will pay tribute to the deceased at Congress Bhawan in Raipur and will later go to Jagdalpur to meet those injured in the incident, PTI reports, quoting a state Congress leader.

With questions being raised about security at the rally, the union home ministry has sought a report about security, according to reports. The state Congress has already criticised the Raman Singh government in Chhattisgarh for failure to provide foolproof security. The BJP has

Patel and his son, along with a few others from the Congress team visiting the area, were abducted during the ambush last evening.
Twenty-seventy people were killed in the ambush as the Congress leaders, travelling in Bastar as part of the parivartan yatra launched by the party against the ruling BJP government in Chhattisgarh, were returning from Sukma to Bastar. According to police reports, a group of heavily armed Maoists gheroed the party and opened fire.

Among those killed was Mahendra Karma, a senior party leader and founder of the anti-Naxal campaign Salwa Judum.

According to reports, senior Congress leader and former union minister Vidya Charan Shukla, who was left critically injured in the attack, was admitted in Gurgaon’s Medanta Hospital on Sunday and is stated to be critical still.

Shukla, 84, was airlifted to Medanta Hospital from Raipur early Sunday morning, PTI reports, adding that the former union minister had on Saturday night undergone an operation in Jagdalpur hospital for removal of three bullets he had received in the attack.