Thursday, February 10 2005 12:22 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Sambalpur (Orissa): One more labourer, taken hostage by suspected MCC (Maoist Communist Centre) cadres, was released last night (Feb 9, 2005) as information was not available on 14 others abducted from two interior villages of Orissa's Sambalpur district.

Official sources said that about 40 armed activists, some of them masked, who had raided two labour camps at Phulkusuma and Podanala villages in the Kisinda police station area and forced 19 labourers to accompany them at gunpoint in the early hours yesterday and were still at large.

They subsequently freed five of the labourers who said that they had been taken to a hill a few kms away and then allowed to go. The other person was released later in the day.

Panic had spread in the villages following the incident although the police launched a combing operation in the forested area.

In a related incident, the police had arrested five persons at Tuhilamal village in the neighbouring Deogarh district yesterday.

The five persons had picked up a quarrel with fellow villagers who had gathered to discuss the threat posed by the MCC cadres. They reportedly had argued in favour of the ultras, which irked the other villagers.

The police was later informed about the matter leading to their arrest, the sources said.

A Panchayat Samiti member, Loknath Gadtia, had been abducted from the same village by the suspected MCC cadres a few days ago. But he was released.

The labourers were engaged in the construction of a road in the area under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana.

The suspected ultras, who pasted some posters on the walls of the village demanding payment of proper wages to the labourers and maintenance of transparency in expenditure, burnt down an excavator and a dumper worth about Rs 1 crore before they left the place.