A 30-year-old police jawan from Gumla died on way to a hospital in Ranchi on Tuesday after sustaining severe injuries in an IED blast triggered by the outlawed CPI (Maoist) group at a dense jungle at Serengdag in Lohardaga district.

Police said said Duleshwar Paras, who was airlifted by an Indian Air Force chopper from the jungle in Lohardaga and brought to Ranchi for treatment, succumbed to his injuries after landing at the state helipad at Khelgaon, from where he was taken to Bhagwan Mahavir Medica Superspecialty Hospital by road. Doctors there declared him “brought dead”.

The martyr’s mortal remains have been sent to the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) for post-mortem. His last rites will be performed with state honours at his native place in Gumla, police sources said.

Duleshwar belonged to a small action team of the district police. He was part of a joint operation of SAP 3 and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) against CPI (Maoist) rebels, who are said to be active in suburban Lohardaga and neighbouring Gumla. No other casualty has been reported from the site of the operation.

Duleshwar Paras Telegraph Picture

Sources said the IED (improvised explosive device) got triggered after Duleshwar stepped on it during the operation. He lost one of his legs in the explosion. His fellow soldiers, sources said, took a profusely bleeding Duleshwar to a safe place in the encounter site to tray and save his life. Later, he was airlifted to Ranchi.

“The IED was a pressure bomb, which got triggered with the jawan stepped on it. He was conscious but he had lost a lot of blood because of the injuries in his legs,” said a CRPF official not authorities to give official statements to the media.

SAT are small teams of district police personnel formed in each district to fight Left Wing Extremism (LWE) and run special operations against the rebel outfits.

CRPF officials said that the combing operations were on at the neighbouring areas of Lohardaga and Gumla from Sunday. The security forces had received intelligence inputs that dreaded Maoist leader Ravinder Ganju, who has a bounty of Rs 10 lakh on his head, and other members of his team were active in the region.

As per figures with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), at least 19 of 24 districts in Jharkhand are LWE-affected. Besides the CPI (Maoist), there are more than 17 splinter outfits operating in various districts of Jharkhand, say police.