ROURKELA: A group of 30 armed miscreants allegedly breached the high security arrangements of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) and entered the core area besides keeping two employees captive for about 90 minutes on Monday late night.
The miscreants, however, had to return empty-handed as they failed to find keys of the storerooms possessing costly materials.
Sources said the miscreants with sharp weapons sneaked into the Electrical Shift Office and Load Transfer Sub-station of the Ore Bedding and Blending Plant (OBBP) at about 1.30 am.
While two employees had gone to other sites of the OBBP, remaining two employees were taken to a nearby isolated place and kept tied to a tree. The miscreants demanded keys of the storerooms, but since the keys were not available with the two held, the miscreants finally fled the spot at about 3 am as other employees started arriving.
A full battalion of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) looks after the internal security of the RSP, the first integrated public sector steel plant of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL).
Rourkela SP Uma Shankar Dash said the miscreants were armed with sharp weapons and they appeared to be from the nearby slums. "Identification of the miscreants is underway. Legal action would be initiated against them soon," he assured.
The vital installation RSP’s vulnerability to security threat continues unabated. Earlier, in the second week of September 2016, around 20 miscreants had entered the SMS-II site to steal the costly Ferroniobium and fired two rounds to scare away the CISF personnel but fled when they were countered by the CISF.
In another incident, armed miscreants had looted employees inside the core areas of the RSP while numerous incidents of thefts of costly materials went unnoticed. Huge quantity of costly Ferroniobium was found stolen in January 2016 and the plant authorities had to take action against one executive and two non-executives after the incident came to the fore.
General Secretary of RSP’s recognised trade union Rourkela Ispat Karkhana Karmachari Sangh (RIKKS) H S Bal said incidents of organised and unorganised theft are common affair inside the RSP. It is a major security concern as miscreants easily enter the core areas, he added.
Some senior CISF officials claimed that though they had requested RSP authorities several times to fully plug the gaps in the boundary walls and raise their heights, no tangible action has yet been taken.