Maoists storm railway station in Orissa

While the fifth foundation day of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) passed off peacefully in the rest of the state,armed Maoists...

While the fifth foundation day of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) passed off peacefully in the rest of the state,armed Maoists stormed a railway station in the north-western district of Sundargarh and threatened the staff there.

The situation is normal in Malkangiri. We have had no reports of violence today, said Satyabrat Bhoi,SP of Malkangiri,the southernmost district of the State and one which shares its boundary with Chhatisgarh. Security was tightened in Malkangiri after posters were distributed on behalf of CPI (Maoist) criticising the State government for construction of roads in tribal-dominated areas. The leaflets alleged that contractors were benefitting from road construction.

But up north in Sundargarh,a group of armed Maoists asked assistant station master (ASM) Arbind Kumar and a porter to leave Roxi station.

On August 25,the station was reduced to rubble by Maoists with landmines. Today,shouting slogans like station band karo the Maoists asked Kumar and a porter to leave the building. But they did not harm anyone, said IGP(Operations) Sanjib Marik. The station,under Rourkela-Barsuan section in Orissas Sundargarh district,has remained closed since last month following the blasts.

Marik said construction work was still going on at Roxi. The single gauge line passing through Roxi snakes through the foot-hills of Maoist-infested Saranda jungles on the Orissa-Jharkhand border.

Meanwhile,the state government impressed upon the Union Home Ministry the need to dispatch seven more battalions of central paramilitary forces to effectively counter the Maoists,some of whom are likely to sneak into Malkangiri due to the ongoing anti-Maoist operation in Chhatisgarh district. We need more forces as places like the cut-off area in Malkangiri are too vast, said Marik,alluding to the water-locked region in Chitrakonda reservoir of the district. The area spread over a region of 500 sq km on Andhra-Orissa border has been a liberated zone from where the rebels sank a boat carrying 38 Greyhound police personnel last year.

The seven battalions of Central paramilitary force were promised to Orissa by Home Minister P Chidambaram during his visit to the state in June this year. The battalions were supposed to arrive in Orissa by September. But a senior CRPF official said that due to unforeseen circumstances the schedule has been delayed. The withdrawl of paramilitary forces from Jammu and Kashmir and northeast regions has not happened yet. We now hope the battalions would arrive in Orissa by the first week of October, the official said.