The State bandh called by CPI (Maoist) in protest against what they termed as spree of “encounter killings” in Dandakaranya forest region began on a violent note with the Maoist rebels blasting a culvert on the Bhadrachalam-Charla highway about 45 km from the temple town of Bhadrachalam at Satyanarayanapuram in Charla mandal in the wee hours of Friday.
The incident took place a few kilometres away from Kaliveru, a border village along the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border where a CRPF camp is located.
It comes close on the heels of a similar incident in which the Left-wing extremists blasted a low level culvert at Pedamidisileru village in the same mandal on April 24.
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It is suspected that they blew up the culvert by detonating explosives at about 2 a.m. The impact of the blast was so intense that it created about 5 ft crater on one side of the road. Vehicular movement on the busy highway was disrupted for sometime.
In a related development, Maoists put up hand-written wall posters at Gogubaka village in the same mandal condemning the recent “encounters” in Gadchiroli of Maharashtra and Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh in which over 50 Maoist cadres were killed.
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Tension flared up in the remote tribal pockets of the Bhadrachalam Agency with additional contingents of police and CRPF troupes spanning across the forest region to track down the Maoist rebels.
In 2006 Maoist rebels blasted a telephone exchange and in 2014 made a vain bid to blew up a cell phone tower at Satyanarayanapuram.
Miscreants looted ₹10 lakh from the local branch of a nationalised bank in the same village in September 2009, sources added.