Bihar: Maoists ransack railway station; abduct 3 railway employees

Armed Maoists on Monday night ransacked Islampur railway station in Bihar's Gaya district and abducted the station master and two other railway employees as their 48-hour bandh began in five states, railway officials said.

Over two hundred extremists ransacked the Islampur station, about 30 km from Gaya in Gaya-Mughalsarai route of the East Central Railway, and took away the station master and two other railway employees with them, they said.

The Maoists have called a 48-hour bandh in Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. Security personnel have launched raids to rescue the abducted railway employees, the officials said.

Meanwhile, several trains including the Howrah-New Delhi Rajdhani and the Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani were halted at the Gaya station following the attack, they said.