Maoists greet Chidambaram by blowing up a railway station in Koraput

BHUBANESWAR: Suspected Maoists on Thursday greeted union home minister P.Chidambaram by blowing up a railway station and three mobile towers Koraput district. They also set ablaze a government office.

The incidents happened barely a few hours before the minister���s visit to the region to take stock of the Naxal problem. Early morning on Thursday, the Maoists blasted the Kakiriguma railway station in Koraput district, nearly 530 km from here using landmines. They also blew up three mobile towers in the area, Koraput superintendent of police Deepak Kumar said.

���The Maoists blew up the railway station by triggering a landmine explosion. As a result, two battery rooms, a panel board and the relay room of the railway station have been severely damaged,��� a spokesman of the East Coast Railway here said.

The ultras, however, left the railway officials on duty unharmed. Train services between Koraput- Rayagada and Visakhapatnam-Koraput have been disrupted following the incident.

Incidentally, 10 days after they cut off road and tele-communication links to Narayanpatna block, nearly 200 km from Koraput, the Maoists, for the first time, made their presence felt in the area by attacking the block office there late on Wednesday night.

According to the police, around 1000 Ultras including women cadre, armed with sophisticated weapons, ransacked the block office and destroyed all official records. They decamped with a dozen vehicles, eight computers and food materials before setting fire to the office.

On his arrival at Koraput, a major town in south Orissa, the home minister held a review meeting with the senior state government officials along with officials based in Koraput, Rayagada, Malkangiri and Nawarangpur districts, considered to be the strongholds of the rebels.

Mr Chidambaram is scheduled to visit Damonjodi on Friday where Nalco���s hilltop bauxite mine is located. The mine was attacked by the Maoists on April 12 this year apparently to loot the explosives stored there, leading to death of 10 CISF personnel.

The home minister is also scheduled to visit the riot-hit Kandhamal district on Friday. After his return from Kandhamal, he will hold discussion with chief minister Naveen Patnaik in the state secretariat here on the Naxal issue.

Mr Chidambaram���s meeting with Mr Patnaik is viewed seriously in the wake of union law and justice minister M Veerappa Moily accusing the state government of not being serious towards the Maoist problem.

Mr Moly cited the instance of neighbouring West Bengal, saying that that as soon as the Left Front government felt that things were going out of its control in Lalgarh area, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee rushed to Delhi seeking assistance. But the Naveen Patnaik regime had not shown such kind of seriousness to solve the
problem, said Moily who was here on a two-day visit to the state.