Dozens of masked and heavily-armed Maoists in their 20s attacked a passenger train in Jamui, 170 km from Patna on Thursday and gunned down a Railway Protection Special Force (RPSF) jawan, a police sub-inspector and a civilian before vanishing into the thick forests.
During the hour-long operation, the Maoists fired indiscriminately at the train and decamped with three sophisticated weapons, which they snatched from the RPSF jawans.
In a second attack in one day the Maoists also attacked Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans involved in a combing and search operation against them in Gaya district, injuring a CRPF constable.
In the first incident, around 150 Maoists, including a good number of women ultras, attacked the 13331 Dhanbad-Patna Intercity Express around 1 pm. The attack took place between Jamui and Bhalui railway stations, falling under Jhajha-Kiul section of East Central Railway’s Danapur division.
Additional Director-General of Police (law and Order) SK Bhardwaj told The Pioneer that one of the deceased passengers has been identified as Kumar Amit, who was posted as a Sub-Inspector of Police in Patna, while the other passenger has been identified as Sarvar Alam of Purnea.
An RPSF jawan, Sukhant Deonath was also killed in the attack and a Railway employee of Jamalpur Workshop, Manoj Kumar Singh sustained serious injuries. The Maoists looted two INSAS rifles and an AK-47 rifle from the security personnel travelling in the train.
Eyewitnesses said that some Maoists had apparently boarded the Patna-bound train at an earlier station and they stopped the train by pulling the chain. Around 150 Maoists who had been waiting in the forests near the tracks then began firing at the train. The RPSF returned the fire and one RPSF jawan was killed, while the guard of the train, KP Singh sustained bullet injuries on his arm.
A Patna-based senior journalist, Pranav Kumar Choudhary who was travelling on the train said that a large number of extremists attacked the train around 1.30 p.m. when it was passing through the dense forest between Jamui and Bhalui railway stations.
Besides firing indiscriminately on the security personnel and the train passengers, the extremists also exploded bombs outside several compartments of the train, he added.
Choudhary said that the extremists were in uniforms and the women ultras had covered their faces. The attack lasted for more than one hour and then the extremists vanished into the thick forest, facing negligible resistance from the security personnel who were outnumbered and were no match for the strong contingent of extremists.
The journalist said that the ultras were totally ruthless and shot a young man at point blank range even though he did not offer any resistance, just to terrorize other passengers in the train.
Chief Public Relations Officer of East Central Railway, Amitabh Prabhakar told The Pioneer that Dharmender Sao of lakhisarai, PK Tripathy of Patna and Satish Kumar of Muzaffarpur also received bullet injuries in the attack. He said that the movement of various trains on up and down lines was affected due to the Naxal attack.
District Magistrate of Jamui, Shashi Kant Tiwari said that two companies of the CRPF were engaged in an extensive operation to flush out the extremists who had taken shelter in their hideouts scattered through the thick jungles of the region.
In another incident involving Maoists on Thursday, a CRPF constable was injured in an encounter with the ultras in Bihar's Gaya district. The encounter took place when the CRPF launched a combing and search operation against the ultras at Tokna and Mangrama villages in Chhatarbanda forest, CRPF DIG Chiranjeev Kumar said.
CRPF jawans and Maoists exchanged over 100 rounds of fire at Tokna village before the ultras retreated into the deep forest, Kumar said.CRPF CoBRA unit constable Ravishankar sustained bullet injuries during the encounter and was rushed to the hospital, he said.Only last month, Maoists had ambushed a convoy of Congress politicians in Chhattisgarh, killing at least 19 people.