The interlocutors — Hyderabad-based professor G Hargopal and former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer BD Sharma — reached Bastar by a chopper arranged by the state. The video footage aired by a local TV channel showed that Hargopal and Sharma travelled several kilometres as pillion riders on motorcycles from Chintalnar to Tarmetla where the armed guerrillas shook hands with them on camera.

The two journalists of the news channel who carried the interlocutors as pillion riders were thoroughly checked by armed Maoists who vanished into the jungles with Hargopal and Sharma to know what the Chhattisgarh government has decided about their demands.