Maoists suspected in explosives loot near Saranda; Odisha, Jharkhand police launch joint anti-maoist operations
ROURKELA: A day after suspected Maoists hijacked and looted a truck laden with huge cache of blasting explosives, Rourkela police intensified combing operation along the Odisha-Jharkhand border with DGP YB Khurania visiting the steel city to take stock of the situation on Wednesday.
Reliable sources said the DGP held a closed-door meeting with IG (Operation) Deepak Kumar, DIG (Western Range) Brijesh Kumar Rai and Sundargarh SP Pratyush Diwakar, also in charge of Rourkela. Khurania also reportedly visited K Balang police station amid tight security and reviewed the ongoing investigation.
At around 9.30 am on Tuesday, eight armed persons hijacked the explosives-laden truck from near a forested stone quarry at Banko within K Balang police limits, more than 90 km from Rourkela and drove the vehicle to a nearby forest. Another 10-15 persons waiting inside the forest looted at least 150 packets of explosives each weighing 15 to 25 kg. The loot site is barely two km from the Maoist hotbed of Saranda forest in West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. The empty vehicle was later found abandoned inside the forest and its driver was unhurt.
Requesting anonymity, a police officer associated with the investigation said driver of the explosives-laden vehicle Debnath Toppo and owner of the stone quarry Niraj Pandey were interrogated. Without ruling out the involvement of the outlawed CPI (Maoist) in the incident, he estimated the value of the looted explosives to be around `1.5 lakh.
Earlier, SP Diwakar had stated that the looted explosives packets contained blasting gelatine sticks. However, it is yet to be ascertained if some of the packets contained detonators as the gelatine sticks would require detonating devices to explode.
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