700 kg of explosives looted by Maoists recovered from Saranda forest
A senior police official of Rourkela said the recovery was made during an intensive combing operation on Wednesday, days after a large cache of explosives was looted by Maoists in Sundargarh district.
The joint operation carried out by Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Special Operations Group (SOG), and the CoBRA unit recovered the explosives in dense forest.
Earlier, the security forces had recovered 2.5 tonnes of explosives in the Saranda forest on Monday. With this recovery, the total quantity of explosives confiscated has climbed to nearly 3.2 tonnes out of the 4 tonnes looted by Maoists on May 28.
On May 27, eight armed Maoists had hijacked around 4 tonnes of gelatin from a truck from near a forested stone quarry at Banko of Sundargarh district in Odisha and drove the vehicle to a nearby forest where they unloaded the explosives and allowed the truck driver to go. The truck driver told the police that another 10-15 persons waiting inside the forest then looted at least 150 packets of explosives each weighing 15 to 25 kg.
Police have arrested the owner of the explosive warehouse from where the explosives were on their way to the stone quarry and the driver who drove the truck. Police said the owner has two explosive licences including one in the name of his wife and owns a warehouse at the remote Itma in Bargaon block of Sundargarh district.
On May 27, three trucks carrying explosives came out of the warehouse. One of the trucks was looted by Maoists while the owner kept the other two trucks hidden and lied to police that the explosives were delivered to clients.
Police said over 25,000 pieces of gelatin sticks, 400 detonators and 22,500 metres of detonating fuse wires were seized from the vehicles. Rourkela SP Nitesh Wadhwani said the accused failed to produce any valid document for the explosives. Agarwal kept the trucks hidden with the intention to sell the explosives later at a higher cost.
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