A JCB machine engaged in digging of trenches in the Gorukonda forest area near Tippapuram, an interior village in Telangana’s Charla mandal, bordering Chhattisgarh, was set ablaze by suspected Maoists on Sunday evening.
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Sources said that three unidentified persons, believed to be Maoist militia members, descended on the worksite camp where two JCB machines were deployed in connection with Forest Department’s trench works under the afforestation programme near Tippapuram late on Sunday evening.
They set ablaze one JCB machine at the worksite and drove away a wheeled excavator into the forests along with its operator, sources said. They reportedly let off the operator in the thickly forested region straddling the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border late on Sunday night.
The incident came to light in the early hours of Monday after the operator returned to the worksite and reported the matter to the Forest department staff. According to sources, the incident took place just a few kilometres away from a CRPF camp on the other side of the inter-State border.
Police, however, said that the identity of the persons responsible for the incident was yet to be ascertained.