A sniffer dog was killed and a jawan of the 203 Cobra battalion seriously injured following an IED blast in the Marwa forests under Kurumgarh police station of Gumla district on Tuesday during an anti-Naxalite operation.

Jharkhand police spokesperson and IG A. V. Homkar told reporters that the injured jawan, Vishwajeet Kumbkar, was airlifted from the spot of the incident and admitted to Ranchi’s Medica hospital. The jawan sustained injuries in his hand, legs and face and is said to be serious.

Tuesday’s operation was jointly rolled out by CRPF, Cobra and district police in the dense forested and mountainous zone of Gumla after a tip-off about the presence of armed rebels in the area.

The injured jawan was the handler of the sniffer dog.

“During the course of the operation, the dog zeroed on the IED but had stepped on it. The handler (Vishwajeet) was at a few distance away from it. The dog halted at a site after spotting the IED. As the handler approached it to take a closer look, the IED exploded even before the bomb disposal squad could be activated,” said a Gumla police officer.

A statement from the state police headquarters in the afternoon maintained that the operation was still underway after evacuation of the injured jawan. “Rebels have laid vast traps of IEDs in the entire vicinity. In the past, a few villagers had died while grazing cattle in similar blasts of IEDs laid by rebels in the forests," said a statement from police headquarters, adding that in May this year, security forces had neutralized a rebel in an encounter in the same forest and recovered a stolen police pistol, .303 rifle, 63 live cartridges and 24 can-bombs.