Patna (IANS) : Maoist guerrillas Sunday blasted a portion of a railway track in Bihar to enforce shutdown, which has been called to protest the arrest of one of their leaders.
The leftist rebels blasted railway track at Rajapatti station in Bihar’s Chapra district, official sources said. No casualty or injury has been reported.
“Maoists planted an explosive devise on the track near the outer signal and detonated it, damaging about two-metre stretch of the line,” sources said. Railway traffic on Chapra-Gopalganj sector of Northwest Railway was disrupted for hours.
A team of police as well as Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel was rushed to the blast site.
The shutdown call had evoked a mixed response, with urban areas unaffected, and normal life in some rural pockets was disrupted.
The Communist Party of India (Maoist) has called a 24-hour shutdown Sunday in the districts of Saran, Tirhut and Champaran to protest the recent arrest of its secretary Lal Babu Sahni alias Bhaskarji and the alleged ill-treatment given to him in high security Beur Central Jail in Patna.
Sahni was arrested with an associate from a hideout at Nayatola in Kumhrar locality of Patna Nov 22 with hundreds of claymore mines, hand grenades and other explosives.
The Bihar government has announced an alert in the state in view of the shutdown call and additional forces have been deployed in the affected districts as a precautionary measure.
“All police stations across state were put on alert,” said Anil Kumar Sinha, additional director general of police (Law and Order).