*Representational image

Despite search operations carried by top brass of the police and over 500 police personnel who were camping at Ghagara village in Khunti district of Jharkhand, to trace the three cops who were abducted from the home of BJP senior leader Karia Munda on Tuesday,no headway was made so far.The three cops remain traceless.

However,the police claim to have identified three spots -- located in a 10-km radius of the village -- after tracking the cellphones of the missing men. The search has been focused on nearby areas,each considered to be infested with Maoists.

Even the abductors have not made any contact with the officials or place any demand.  The police suspect they are supporters of "Pathalgarhi" agitation - an anti-establishment, self-rule movement in parts of the state's tribal belt.

The village has been deserted since last morning's violence in which one villager died and another one was injured.  After the violence, the police rounded up and detained around 200 people on Wednesday.

Police records show that around 150 men had come to Munda's house on Tuesday afternoon. They were protesting against the manhunt in nearby villages for the accused in rape of five activists last week.

 

There were four policemen stationed at the lawmakers' house but one of them managed to escape. The mob kept asking about him, said eyewitnesses to the incident. "They asked 'where have you hidden him'? What could we say? We knew nothing about it," said a relative of Munda. Another relative said the mob finally dragged away the three policemen who were present. "They took away their INSAS rifles too," he added.

Munda is one of the state's tallest tribal leaders and a former deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha.

Last week, a group of six men had abducted 11 activists, including five women, from Khunti - an area nearly 50 km from state capital Ranchi. The men had gang-raped the women for four hours, violated them with a pistol and a branch of tree and forced them to drink urine, the police said. They had also recorded videos of the assaults on their cellphone. 

must read