8-year-old blown to bits in IED explosion

In a ghastly incident, an eight-year-old tribal girl was on Thursday literally blown to pieces when she stepped on a pressure improvised explosive device (IED) planted beneath the road by Maoists near Murliguda under Konta police station in Chhattisgarh’s south Bastar district of Sukma.

The girl, identified as Muchika Anita, died on the spot. Her mother who was accompanying her was grievously injured in the incident, the police said.

Security forces rushed to the spot to retrieve the body of the kid and evacuate the injured the mother for admission in the local hospital.

“It was a horrific sight. The girl’s limbs were severed under the impact of the IED explosion. She died on the spot. Her mother suffered deep wounds all over her body”, Sukma district additional superintendent of police (ASP) Santosh Singh told this newspaper.

The deceased girl was studying in Class 3 in the girls’ residential school at Bhejji in the district. She was sick.

Her mother was carrying her to their native village of Kanhigunda from the school.

“The mother-daughter duo visited the local weekly market to buy essential commodities before leaving for their village. The girl stepped on the IED planted under a roadside tree when they were walking on the under-construction Konta Bonda-Gollapalli road. The explosion was so severe that the mother-daughter duo was thrown away nearly 100 metres from the blast site with their limbs severed,” Mr Singh said.

Last week, one CRPF jawan was killed and deputy commandant of the Central force injured in a similar pressure bomb explosion detonated by Naxals at the same place. The inured CRPF commandant is still in coma.

Naxals have planted pressure bombs in the route to target security forces that have been providing security to the workers engaged in construction of the road.