ROURKELA: After a hiatus of nearly five years, operatives of the banned CPI (Maoist) outfit appear to have made a return to the Odisha-Jharkhand border, triggering a series of blasts from Saturday night to Sunday evening.
Police said the eastern regional bureau (ERB) of the Maoist outfit is suspected to be behind the explosions. These blasts coincided with the outfit’s Martyrs’ Week which technically ended at midnight on Sunday (August 3).
A senior police official confirmed that a low-intensity blast occurred on a railway track near Renjda in K Balang area of Sundargarh district on Saturday night. Another explosion followed on Sunday morning, just a few kilometres from Renjda station, in which a railway trackman was killed on the spot and another suffered injuries. On Sunday evening, a third blast of low intensity was reported near Karampada station in the neighbouring West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand.
All three blasts occurred in Renjda-Karampada section of the Rourkela-Barsuan-Renjda-Topadihi-Karampada rail route under South Eastern Railway (SER).
This rail corridor is a crucial lifeline for transporting iron ore and other minerals from Koida Mining Circle and Jharkhand’s Kiriburu and Meghahatuburu iron mines.