Maoists hijack train with 700 people aboard in more poll-related violence

India's Maoist rebels struck once again ahead of the second phase of parliamentary polls, hijacking a passenger train with 700 to 800 people on board Wednesday, reports the Times of India. 

The train was headed from Jharkhand to Uttar Pradesh — two states known for lawlessness in India's northern badlands — when about 200 Maoist fighters took control, the paper says, citing unconfirmed reports.  According to the BBC, the Maoists released the passengers after a few hours, and a spokesman said the act was "a symbolic gesture."

There has been a spike in such attacks after the Maoists called for a bandh — or general strike — to boycott polls in Jharkhand and Bihar. 

Earlier on Wednesday, suspected Maoists killed a truck driver and set ablaze nine trucks and bombed a government office in Bihar, the paper quotes police sources as saying. 

Over 100 armed Maoists attacked trucks on the famed Grand Trunk Road near Barachatti, about 100 kilometers from Delhi, at around 12.30 a.m. They forcibly stopped the trucks at gun point and torched nine of the vehicles, the paper reports.

In the first phase of polling, Maoists killed at least 18 people in election-related violence, including a number of security officers.  Subsequently, several local newspapers blamed the security fiasco on the election commission's insistence on holding polls in a number of violence-prone constituencies simultaneously due to their geographical proximity — a decision that seemed to make the whole exercise of phased polling irrelevant.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/india/090422/maoists-hijack-train-700-people-aboard-more-poll-related-violence