Most of looted explosives recovered

Bhubaneswar: Security personnel on Friday recovered a substantial amount of the explosives recently looted by Maoists in Sundargarh district following a fierce gun-battle with the red rebels, police said.

Around 200 packets of explosives, mostly gelatin sticks, were looted by Maoists at gun-point in K Balang police station area three days ago while those were being transported to a stone quarry for blasting rocks.

The police had launched a search operation to locate the looted items. The joint efforts of nine teams of jawans belonging to Odisha Police’s SOG and CRPF finally located the explosive materials in a dense forest in Jharkhand, around 3 km from Odisha border.

“We have recovered a substantial amount of the explosive materials looted from K Balang area,” Rourkela SP Nitesh Wadhwani said, adding that some other incriminating materials were also seized. The SP said there was no injury to any member of the search teams. Sources said the explosives were found at Tirilposh, located close to Saranda forest, on Odisha-Jharkhand inter-State boundary.

The Odisha Police had earlier confirmed that Maoists from Jharkhand were involved in looting the explosives from a truck on Tuesday. According to the police, around 30 armed Maoists from Jharkhand hijacked the gelatin sticks-laden truck by holding the driver of the vehicle at gun-point.

A day after the looting, Odisha DGP Y B Khurania and other senior police officers visited the spot and an NIA team started investigating the matter. Security forces from Odisha and Jharkhand, along with the CRPF personnel, immediately launched a massive search operation to retrieve the stolen explosives.

Odisha Police have also constituted an SIT (Special Investigation Team) to probe into the incident. Meanwhile, police sources said the gunfight was underway between security personnel and red rebels in the dense forest along the Odisha-Jharkhand inter-State boundary.