Raipur, May 9: Not hundreds, but just one Maoist possibly triggered last evening’s landmine that blew up eight CRPF jawans in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, the state’s police chief suggested today.

“The blast could have been triggered by a single Maoist. Since there was no firing after the blast (a common rebel tactic), it substantiated the reports that only one person did the job,” DGP Vishwa Ranjan said.

The strategy represented a new element in the offensive by Maoists, who have so far carried out major operations with hundreds of guerrillas. They had already sprung a surprise by picking out a bustling road — National Highway 16 that connects Nizamabad in Andhra Pradesh with Jagdalpur in Chhattisgarh — for the attack.

Yesterday’s strike came just over a month after the killing of 76 personnel, 75 of them CRPF jawans, in Dantewada.

Sources in the police’s intelligence wing said as possibly only one person was at the spot, it was hard for the patrolling and road-opening party, which had passed the stretch a little earlier, to detect any danger.

Police chief Ranjan defended the road-opening party, saying “it was next to impossible” for any agency in the world” to trace the mine.