By IANS
Raipur : A day after the seizure of a huge cache of explosives from a car here, the Chhattisgarh police Sunday stepped up efforts to ascertain whether the explosives were meant for the Maoist insurgents, who command a vast forest area of the state.
“It was the biggest ever recovery of explosives in the state since it came into existence in November 2000, but now the police have to wrap up the probe fast whether it was meant for insurgents,” S.K. Paswan, state’s additional director general of police told IANS by phone.
The police were stunned when they found about 29,000 detonators in 14 boxes in a Maruti WagonR, which the cops stopped for a routine check in the state’s capital city, a top home department source told IANS Sunday.
The police have detained two people from Orissa, a cloth merchant Gopal Agrawal and his driver Vijay Dadsena. Both the people have failed to give satisfactory answers to from where they took the delivery and for whom it was meant.
“It’s early to say whether the seized explosives had any connection with Maoists but mostly the guerrillas use this type of blast material in southern Bastar region, including Dantewada and Bijapur districts, which have turned out as a virtual death zone for policemen and civilians since past three years,” sources in police headquarters said here.
Since June 2005, at least 882 people have been killed in Maoist violence in Bastar region. The fatalities included the brutal killing of 55 policemen in a single attack in March this year in Bijapur district. Some 672 were killed in landmine attacks executed through blast materials made of gilletins and detonators.