Chief minister Madhu Koda (centre) and deputy chief minister Sudhir Mahto place a wreath on the body of Sunil Mahto. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Jamshedpur, March 6: Jharkhand police today reacted cautiously to posters in which Maoists are said to have owned their responsibility for killing the Jamshedpur member of Parliament, Sunil Mahto.

Posters, which surfaced in some of the remote villages, are expected to reach Jamshedpur tomorrow, asserted the East Singhbhum superintendent of police, Pankaj Kumar Darad.

The contents had been read out to the superintendent and a description given to him, admitted Darad while voicing his scepticism.

There were reasons to suspect that the posters are a red herring, designed to mislead the police, said police officers.

The poster addresses the deceased MP respectfully as “MP saheb”, which, officers point out, is quite unlike the rhetoric that Maoist posters have used so far.

Both the language and the style, they say, have given rise to the suspicion that some people are desperate to pin the killing on the Maoists.

Above all, unlike Maoists, who are known to do their homework well, the posters contain a glaring factual mistake.

While the posters accuse the slain member of Parliament for having instigated the lynching of 11 Maoists in the Lango village, there is no evidence to link Mahto to the massacre.

Sunil Mahto in fact was not even an MP at the time and, in any case, the Nagarik Suraksha Samiti, which mobilised the operation, was a police and state-sponsored experiment to combat the Naxalites.

Janwadi Kranti Morcha, believed to be a front for the underground CPI(Maoist), had denied the involvement of Maoists on Monday — and both police and now the posters seem to question the premise.