Maoists blow up new police station in Chhattisgarh

About 50 armed Maoists blew up a two-storeyed police station under-construction  in Chhattisgarh's restive Bastar region Tuesday, police said.

 
"Maoists stormed into the building at Geedam town, hardly 10 km from Dantewada town and set high-powered explosives and blew it up," Dantewada Superintendent of Police Ankit Garg told IANS over the phone.

The two-storeyed structure was almost complete but was not handed over to the police. "It was a massive blast and the building was mostly blown up," Garg said. Police have launched a massive search operation to apprehend the  rebels but no arrest has been made, he added.

The building was barely one km away from the Geedam police station but policemen posted at the old building had not reached the demolished site even after three hours of the blast.

Meanwhile, reports from Bijapur district say that Maoists abducted a tribal youth and killed a village sarpanch in the Kutru area.  The sarpanch was reportedly killed on charges being a police spy.

Dantewada along with Bijapur, Bastar, Narayanpur and Kanker districts  forms a 40,000 sq km mineral-rich forested area where Maoists have been  since late 1980s running a parallel administration in the interior areas.