Three tribals were abducted by Maoists from Buduguda village under Kalimela police limits on Tuesday. One of them was released on Wednesday morning.
Around 50 armed Maoists arrived at the Buduguda village late on Tuesday and struck at one Ganga Padimai’s house who managed to flee before the rebels could catch hold of him.
When Maoists could not find Padiami in his house, they entered the house of Kunjami Singa and Padiami Lasa and abducted the two along with Ramesh Salda, a student of Kalimela College, who was staying in Singa’s house, for supplying labourers from Sudhakonda area to Andhra Pradesh (AP).
Though they took away the three at gun-point into the dense forest nearby, Ramesh was later released by the rebels after they realised that he was a college student and nothing to do with engagement of labourers.
It is learnt that the rebels decided to abduct both Kunjami and Padiami after a group of labourers sent by the two to work in AP from Sudhakonda alleged before them that they had not
been paid their wages since long by the labour contractors.
The rebels termed Kunjami, Padiami and Ganga as the middlemen of the AP-based contractors who were supplying labourers from the tribal pockets of Kalimela block to AP.
Police are yet to know the whereabouts of the two hostages.
In September, two gram rakhis - Jagabandhu Khilla and Manik Khilla - were killed by Maoists, suspecting them to be police informers. While Jagabandhu belonged to Jodamba, Manik hailed from Handikhal.
In fact, a group of Maoists had abducted nine villagers including a former sarpanch and naib sarpanch on September 20.