Kanchanpur, June 13:

The Maoists today enforced Saptari bandh to protest the murder of their central leader, Dasharath Thakur aka Rohit, yesterday.

According to the Saptari District Police Office, around 12 cadres of the JTMM-Goit group abducted Thakur, a resident of Banauli, from Praswani VDC-8 and shot him dead in a jungle in Dedagrahi.

Short and long-route vehicles stayed off the roads, while educational institutions and industries downed their shutters. Almost all shops, save clinics, were closed in and around Rajbiraj. The body of Thakur, also a member of the Rajbiraj Development Committee, has been brought to the Sagarmatha Zonal Hospital for post-mortem. Meanwhile, the Mithila-Bhojpur bureau in-charge, Matrika Yadav, and District Organisation Committee, Saptari, have denounced the killing of Thakur. The so-called JTMM-Goit caught him while he was headed home and shot him dead cowardly, they said in a press statement, urging the government to take action against the guilty.

Attacks have been mounted over cadres of the CPN (Maoist) in various districts at a time when the party has laid down its arms in a bid to give peaceful outlet to the problems as per the wish of people, they said. They have called on all people to translate grief into power and retaliate against such elements.

Maoist leader’s warning

RAJBIRAJ: A central member of the CPN (Maoist) and deputy military commander Chandra Khanal “Baldev” has warned that his party will take out all weapons locked in arms containers if the killing of Maoist cadres continues. He was speaking at a function held here on Wednesday to pay tribute to a Maoist leader, Dashrath Thakur “Rohit”, who was killed by JTMM-Goit cadres at Saptari’s Diman on Tuesday. Saying that different groups were engaged in killing, looting and extortion in the Tarai in the name of disgruntled Madhesis, Khanal said: “These criminal gangs will never be able to prove themselves as the messiahs of the Madhes.”

“We will retaliate if Maoist cadres are killed in the name of the Madhes agitation,” he said. Saying that the Maoists have gone to the cantonment sites to revive peace and restore people’s rights in the country, Khanal warned hostile groups not to take these good intentions of the Maoists as their weakness. — HNS