Twenty-one people hailing from Andhra Pradesh and suspected to be members of the Peoples’ War Group (PWG) were arrested from Naxal-hit Dumaria block in Jharkhand even as the state-wide bandh by the Jharkhand Disom Party in tribal-dominated areas affected life in the state.They were detained for interrogation after two of them, Krishna Naidu and Babu Sayeed Waqar, were nabbed by residents of Vitharamda village in the block yesterday and handed over to police, SP Arun Oraon said. The other members, who claim to be fruit and seed vendors, were detained today from Ghatsila in the district, he said.Meanwhile, activists of the Maoist Communist Centre and the PWG, who called today’s bandh, turned their ire on the Railways, damaging the engine of a goods train and beat up a driver near Daltonganj in Palamu. Four trucks were torched alongside the highway in Koderma, an engine of a goods train burnt in Mangra police station in Palamau and Kurla station in Dhanbad attacked with the result that the rail traffic on this section was brought to a halt for hours.Elsewhere, vehicular traffic on the national and state highways remained paralysed. Even private and government schools in the capital didn’t open. Loading and ferrying of coal from the mines of three public sector companies —CCL, ECL and BCCL — virtually came to a halt though life went on as usual in Ranchi, Jamshedpur, Hazaribagh, Dhanbad, Dumka, Sahebgunj, Pakur and Bokaro cities.
