Garwah (Jharkhand): A band of 40 Naxalites of the People's War group (PWG) exploded dynamite to destroy the ancestral house of Jharkhand Water Resources Minister Ram Chandra Kesari at Paraspani village in Garwah district early on July 18.

Police said the naxalites raided the house at about 1:00 am and triggered the blast destroying the building. They stayed there for about ninety minutes raising anti-Kesari slogan.

While returning they attacked a villager who was critically injured.

Later the minister said that the incident was a direct attack on poor adivasis since the building housed a school for tribals.

''The structure which housed an Angavadi school was blasted with dynamite. The children of Korva Parhia (one of the oldest tribe) and harijan families used to come to the school,'' Kesari said in a release.

Claiming that he had distributed 25 acre of land among the Korva Parhia adivasi people free of cost, he said the extremists had blasted his house as his popularity among the people was not liked by them.

''It's a shear act of frustration,'' the minister said.

PTI