Security forces recover more than half of 4 tonnes explosives looted by Maoists
Bhubaneswar: A week after Maoists looted 4 tonnes of industrial explosives meant for stone quarry on Odisha-Jharkhand border, security forces on Monday recovered around 2.5 tonnes of it during a joint search operation carried out by Odisha police, CoBRA and Jaguar from Jharkhand and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).
Police officials in Odisha said the industrial explosive packets, in the form of gelatin sticks, were found stacked in and around the paths used by Maoist operatives in the hilly terrain of the dense Saranda forest in West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. While a few packs were found lying in the forest on the Sundargarh side of Odisha, most of the other packets were kept hidden in the Saranda forest close to the Odisha border.
On Tuesday, 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 police that another 10-15 persons waiting inside the forest then looted at least 150 packets of explosives each weighing 15 to 25 kg.
'Due to the immediate launch of the search operation by the security forces, the Maoists could not get enough time to carry away the explosive packets to faraway locations inside the Saranda forest and had to bury the same,' said a senior official of the Odisha police. On Friday too, the security forces had recovered some amount of the explosives that were looted.
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