Contractor's son kidnapped, shot dead by Naxals in Chhattisgarh

Raipur: Naxals have shot dead the son of a contractor whom they had abducted from a rail construction site in Chhattisgarh's Kanker district, police said today.

The body of Ramesh Jain (38) was found this morning at a forest in the district's Rekhabat village, Kanker's Superintendent of Police K L Dhruv told PTI.

Darbari Ram, the father of the deceased, had the contract for cutting of trees in the forest area for laying tracks as part of the Dallirajhra-Rowghat railway project and transportation of logs to the forest department's depot, he said.

Yesterday, when Ramesh Jain was engaged in the work of transportation of timber logs in the forest close to Rekhabat between Rowghat and Tadoki, a group of armed Naxals reached there.

The rebels asked the workers to leave the place. After torching four trucks and a loader machine they took the victim along with them, the SP said.

"Later, they shot him dead in the nearby forest," Dhruv said.

Upon getting information, the SP and other officials reached the spot today and sent the body for postmortem.

A search operation was launched in the region to trace the ultras, the police official said.

The construction of Dallirajhara-Rowghat-Jagdalpur broad-gauge railway line,?covering 235 kms, would allow transportation of iron ore from the Naxal-affected area in north Bastar.

Besides, it will provide transportation facility to the people in the Naxal hotbed.

The work in the first phase, covering a 95-km route from Dallirajhara to?Rowghat,?is in progress with 17 kms?of tracks upto Gudum commissioned for passenger train traffic.

According to police, the Maoists?have been opposing the project since its inception, fearing that the?construction of the rail route will speed up the development work in Bastar thereby uprooting them from the region.