Jarkhand police officer, jawan shot dead by Left rebels

A sub-inspector and a district constabulary jawan were killed in a gunfight with a Left rebel group, late Saturday in Jharkhand’s Simdega district.

Bano police station in-charge Vidhyapati Singh and a team of four guards stormed a house in Mahabuang village after they were alerted about the presence of People’s Liberation Front of India (PLFI) second-in-command Guddu Gope, police said.

Vidhyapati asked the rebel commander to surrender but Gope opened fire with an AK-47, injuring Singh and jawan Raju Biruli. “Our OC (officer in-charge) did not fire first as there were women in the house,” SP Rajiv Ranjan Singh said.

Gope managed to flee under the cover of darkness but a gunfight broke out between his men and the police team.

Vidhyapati and Biruli were taken to a local hospital but were declared dead.

Four members of a family were found dead inside their house in a posh locality in Thiruvananthapuram early on Sunday, police said.

While three bodies were found in a burnt state, another was cut into pieces and kept in a bag at the multi-storeyed house in the posh locality near Cliff House, the official residence of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan

The incident came to light after locals noticed thick smoke emanating from the house in the wee hours of the day and alerted the police.

Preliminary investigations revealed that it was a case of murder, the police said, adding that the bodies were about three days old. PTI