Nuapada: Panic gripped residents of Sinapali block in Nuapada district Saturday night after a group of CPI (Maoist) rebels attacked a road construction camp and torched several vehicles and machinery.
The Maoists also put up posters at different locations before leaving, calling for a bandh in some tribal-dominated districts June 4.
The group barged into the camp on the Gorla-Dumerbahal road while some workers were engaged in the construction of a culvert. They threatened the workers and drove them away from the site, after which the rebels first set a mixture machine on fire and then went on to torch other vehicles in the camp one after another.
Luckily for the contractor, Mahendra Agarwal, he was not present in the camp at the time of the attack. “Otherwise, the Maoists would have shot him dead as they were looking for him,” a worker said.
As the panicked workers fled from the spot, the cadres put up a number of posters at different places inside the camp. The posters criticised the alleged police excesses on innocent villagers in the name of anti-Maoist operations.
The Maoists also dubbed some of the recent police operations against them as fake and appealed to the people to join the “revolution”.
The posters released in the name of Odisha State Committee of CPI (Maoist) criticised the police encounters in which at least seven rebels were killed in Kandhamal and Bolangir districts in the May 23 and May 24.
Protesting the killing of the seven rebels, the Maoists have called for a bandh again June 4 in Nuapada, Bolangir and Bargarh districts along with Mahasamund and Gariaband districts of Chhattisgarh.
The Maoists had called for a bandh in Kandhamal, Nayagarh, Bolangir and Nuapada districts soon after the encounter, which, however, had evoked only lukewarm response.
Following the incident, security forces rushed to the spot and seized the posters. On the other hand, the police and security forces have intensified combing in and around Sinapali block in an effort to track down the rebels.
PNN