Bhubaneswar: Three days after suspected Maoists looted around 1.5 tonnes of gelatin sticks from a truck near the Odisha-Jharkhand border, security forces have recovered a portion of the stolen explosives during a joint combing operation in the dense Saranda forests, police officers said on Friday.
“On Friday afternoon, the teams found some of the looted explosives 3 km inside the Jharkhand border inside Saranda forest. We have not assessed the exact amount so far as operations are still going on. By Saturday evening, we would know the exact amount that we could recover,” a senior official of Rourkela police said.
On Tuesday, eight armed persons had hijacked a truck laden with gelatin stocks near a forested stone quarry at Banko, within K. Balang police limits of Rourkela, and drove the vehicle to a nearby forest where they unloaded the explosives and allowed the truck driver to go. The truck driver told the police that another 10–15 people waiting inside the forest then looted at least 150 packets of explosives, each weighing 15 to 25 kg.
Nine teams of the special operations group of the Odisha police, Jaguar team of the Jharkhand police, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) started a joint operation in the area, resulting in a few encounters.
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The police said that the looted gelatins, meant for the stone quarry, were in slurry form. The gelatin sticks can be used as IEDs if there are enough detonators with them. “From our investigation, it is certain that Maoists from Saranda forest did it. That’s why the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has started probing the loot,” a senior police official of Rourkela said.
The police suspect the loot to be a retaliatory move by the Maoists after their top commanders, including Maoist leader Basavaraju, were killed in Narayanpur forest of Chhattisgarh last week. “The amount that they have looted is too much for them to handle and carry around. Besides, they normally burn down the vehicles after looting, which they have not done in this case. We are working in coordination with the NIA team,” an officer said.
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In one of the biggest-ever loot incidents, Maoists in April 2009 had looted about 25 tonnes of explosives, including ammonium nitrate and detonators, from the explosive warehouse of Nalco, manned by CISF jawans. 11 CISF jawans were killed in that attack.