Two Railways staff abducted, allegedly by Naxalites, in Bihar

PATNA: An assistant station (ASM) master and a porter was abducted by armed Maoists after they attacked Madhusudan halt sattion under Piri Bazaar police station area in Lakhisarai district of Bihar on Wednesday. The area is Maoists dominated and security forces have launched an operation to rescue the duo. The Eastern Railways (ER) has stopped traffic on the Kiul-Jamalpur section after the incident.
Sources said that the Maoists, using the cellphone of ASM, had called Malda DRM in West Bengal and demanded that traffic be stopped on the section, else both the abducted persons would be killed.
Police sources said the incident took place just after midnight when a heavily armed contingent of Maoist first torched the outer signal of the halt and then took ASM Mukesh Kumar and porter Devendra Kumar Mandal hostage. The two were taken deep inside the jungles in hills in the neighbouring area.
Lakhisarai SP Arvind Thakur said that a joint operation with help of Special Task Force (STF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) was launched to rescue the abducted ASM and porter.
The pamphlet released by the Maoist group
Sources said the midnight incident was to protest against Operation Green Hunt, a joint operation of security personnel against the extremists in bordering areas of Bihar and Jharkhand which resulted in recovery of arms, ammunition and IEDs (improvised explosive device) from several Maoist dominated areas in last few weeks.
Maoista have called a 3-day bandh, from Dec 18-20 against the operations.
Railway sources said a caution has been issued for safe plying of trains on Jamalpur-Kiul section due to the bandh called by the extremists.
ECR CPRO Rajesh Kumar, in a media communication, said that Farakka Express and Muzaffarpur-Bhagalpur Jan Sewa Express were stopped at Kiul, Banka Express at Barahiya and Jaynagar Howrah passenger train at Dinkar Gram Samaria. He also said that train movement on Kiul-Jamalpur-Bhagalpur of ER was stopped.
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