Maoists kidnap Bihar engineer, release him after few hours

SHERGHATI - A civil engineer of a private construction firm, who was briefly abducted and detained by the Maoists, was rescued from a remote forest region of Bihar’s Gaya district on Tuesday.

Heavily-armed personnel of the Revolutionary Communist Centre (RCC), a breakaway faction of the proscribed CPI (Maoists), raided the office of the construction firm, burnt a machine and kidnapped the engineer, Sudip Ghosh, from Banahi village.

“We rounded up the place on a tip off; after struggling for several hours, we were able to spot him within six to seven hours,” said Ranjan Kumar, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Gaya.

He further mentioned that the main aim behind this abduction must have been to collect levy from the owner of the construction firm.

“We were returning from a construction site and saw a loading machine stalled at a place. We went to check the machine only to find some people were trying to set it on fire. They also kidnapped me and kept me for the whole night as their captive. They blindfolded me and hence I don’t know where they had kept me,” noted Ghosh.

Maoist rebels on February 22 had offered a conditional 72-day ceasefire through media, and said that they are willing to talk to the government if it aborts Operation Green Hunt. (ANI)