IED blast kills CRPF ASI in Odisha forest weeks after Maoists looted explosives

ROURKELA: An Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI) of the Jharkhand-based 134 CRPF battalion was martyred in an IED blast on Saturday early morning along the Odisha-Jharkhand border during a joint combing operation against Maoist operatives.
The explosion occurred in the Banko forest under K Balang police station limits of Rourkela Police District (RPD), about 95 km from Rourkela, in Sundargarh district of Odisha. The martyred ASI, Satwan Singh (34), belonged to the 134 CRPF battalion stationed in West Singhbhum district of neighbouring Jharkhand.
The blast site has remained tense, especially as it comes in the wake of the banned CPI (Maoist) operatives hijacking a truck and looting industrial explosives from the same Banko forest on May 27.
After several years of relative calm, Naxal-related violence has resurfaced on the Odisha side of the border.
Sources said that following the blast, the critically injured CRPF personnel was rushed to Apollo Hospital in Rourkela around 9:30 am, where he succumbed to his injuries around 11 am.
DIG of Police (Western Range), Brijesh Kumar Rai, said, 'During the joint combing operation, an IED blast occurred around 5:45 am in the connecting Banko forest with the Saranda forest along the Odisha-Jharkhand border, in which a CRPF jawan was injured and later succumbed.'
He added that the Odisha-Jharkhand border has been put on high alert and security has been further beefed up.
Both DIG Rai and Rourkela SP Nitesh Wadhwani visited the hospital. SP Wadhwani said the anti-Maoist operation would continue with necessary safeguards.
Following the explosive truck loot on the morning of May 27, security forces from Odisha, including SOG and DVF personnel, along with their counterparts from Jharkhand—CRPF, CoBRA and Jharkhand Jaguar—have been conducting intensified search and anti-Naxal operations in the Maoist stronghold of the dense Saranda forest in West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand.
The hijacked truck was believed to be carrying nearly five tonnes of industrial explosives. During the ongoing operations, around 3.8 tonnes of the explosives have been recovered from different parts of the Saranda forest.

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