Raghvendra Rao
New Delhi : The recovery of a heavy-duty motorised cutter from the recently destroyed Maoist camp located atop a hill in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district has led the security agencies to suspect the involvement of this Naxal contingent in the May 28 derailment of the Howrah-Kurla Jnaneswari derailment. The derailment was executed by cutting off a portion of the railway track.
Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that this is the first time this kind of cutter has been recovered from a Naxal camp. “We suspect that some members of this particular Naxal party could have used this machine to cut the rails in Jhargram. The recovery of such a sophisticated cutter also indicates that other Naxal groups could have similar machines with them,” a MHA source said.
Besides 20 claymore mines, three plastic bags containing slurry explosives and six bags of ammonium nitrate, underlining the Naxals’ growing fire power, were also recovered from the hilltop camp located under the Bandgaon police station.As much as 300 kg of dried fish and rice were also recovered from the camp. “Not only were they staying here for a long while, but they were also well-equipped,” a source said.
