Maoist attack on train in eastern India kills three

Maoist guerrillas opened fire on a passenger train in the eastern Indian state of Bihar on Thursday, killing one police officer and two passengers, police said.

Around 100 guerrillas forced the train to stop as it was travelling from the town of Dhanbad to the state capital of Patna and then opened fire, senior police officer Amitabh Das said.

“Three people including one constable were killed and three others were injured in the attack,” Das said by telephone from the scene.

The police officer who died was off duty at the time. The other two who were killed were passengers.

Das, who heads the local unit of the railway police, said all those injured in the attack near the town of Jamui, 133 kilometres from Patna, were passengers.

Vinay Mittal, chairman of the state-run railways, told reporters in New Delhi the attack lasted for one and a half hours.

After the ambush, the train was hauled to the nearest station where doctors were deployed to treat the injured.

The leftwing rebels last month killed 24 people including local leaders of the country’s governing Congress party during a brazen ambush in the central state of Chhattisgarh.

The guerrillas, described by the government as the country’s most serious internal security threat, have waged a decades-long battle across central and eastern states to overthrow local and national authorities.

In New Delhi, junior home minister RPN Singh called Thursday’s attack a “new strategy” by the guerrillas also known as Naxals to seize weapons from police to continue their struggle.

Armed police travel on passenger trains in states where the outlawed rebels are battling security forces.

“The government has been successful in stopping the Naxals from acquiring weapons and in my opinion they have now adopted this new strategy of snatching arms,” the junior minister said.

“But it is sad that they are now attacking ordinary citizens, attacking trains and political parties but we have resolved to take the sternest of steps possible against the Naxals,” Singh said.

The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless farmers in India.