KUMUD JENAMANI
Jamshedpur, March 1: A 52-year-old man was killed while his wife was seriously injured as an IED exploded in a jungle under the Goelkera thana area of West Singhbhum district about 140 km away from here on Wednesday morning.
The victims who were residents of Ichahatu village in Goelkera had gone to harvest crops in a field falling inside the adjoining Chundri jungle under the Kolhan forest division as the blast was triggered.
Immediately after they came to the notice of the police, a company of CRPF personnel entered the forest patch and rescued the injured and recovered the body identified as that of Krishna Purty. The police subsequently took the injured woman identified as Nandi Purty to a nearby health hub.
The IED that went off was among hundreds of such explosive devices that the CPI-Maoist rebels have planted at strategic locations across the Kolhan and Porahat forest divisions while taking shelter there.
On earlier occasions also, villagers were killed in the IED blasts during a period starting in January. Apart from the innocent villagers, as many as 15 paramilitary jawans sustained injuries during the ongoing anti-insurgency operation there began on January 11.
West Singhbhum SP, Ashutosh Shekhar has termed the act of triggering the blast resulting in the death of an innocent villager as cowardice, adding that the naxals hiding in the jungle would be flushed out soon.
