Jharkhand Police suspect Bengal Maoists' hand in Dumka blast

Jharkhand Police suspect the involvement of West Bengal Maoists in Thursday's landmine blast in Dumka district in which eight people, including five security personnel and two polling officials, were killed.

"We cannot rule out the possibility of Bengal Maoists' involvement in the landmine blast as the place where it took place is close to the West Bengal border," Jharkhand Police spokesperson Anurag Gupta told IANS.

Police sources say the Jharkhand Maoists, despite calling for a boycott of the Lok Sabha election, failed to execute any big incident in the state during the first two phases.

In the third phase, there was no report of any Maoist poll boycott call and the security personnel were not as alert as in the previous two rounds. The guerrillas took advantage of this and carried out the blast with the help of their Bengal counterparts.

The blast occurred near Palasi village, about 400 km from here, when the security personnel and the polling officials were returning from a polling station. The victims allegedly did not get any police help for more than three hours.

More than 10 people were injured in the blast. Three of them were Friday morning referred to Dhanbad for treatment.

Jharkhand Police chief Rajiv Kumar and other senior police officials reached Dumka Friday to review the situation.

Chief Minister Hemant Soren, police chief Rajiv Kumar and others paid homage to the security personnel who died in the incident.