New Delhi/Patna, Oct. 28: The Centre today warned of more attacks on trains even as intelligence inputs said large stretches in Maoist-infested Bihar, Jharkhand and areas bordering Bengal were under the “complete sway” of the rebels.

The warning came a day after hundreds of Maoist sympathisers, led by about 25 alleged rebels, held up a Rajdhani Express for several hours in Bengal, prompting a security review by senior railway officials in the capital.

Union home secretary G.K. Pillai said as long as the Maoists had their one-point agenda of armed revolution, they would carry out attacks like the one yesterday.

“In the months to come, this is something, I think, the country should be prepared for,” Pillai told reporters in Delhi.

Railway sources said senior ministry officials who met today decided to post armed Railway Protection Force guards even during the day on trains passing through Maoist-affected regions. Armed personnel are now stationed on important trains only during night runs through sensitive zones.

Ministry officials, however, wouldn’t say if armed men would be deployed on all trains or only in some of the more prestigious ones.

“Those are vital security details which cannot be shared. However, measures taken would be commensurate with the needs of the situation,” said an official.

But intelligence inputs from rebel-infested Bihar and Jharkhand said the Maoists had developed “tactics and firepower” to overwhelm government forces and had complete “control” over vast stretches of tracks.

“At least 25 railway stations and tracks on a stretch of about 1,000km — mainly in hilly and forest terrains — in Bihar, Jharkhand and areas bordering Bengal are under the complete sway of CPI (Maoist) rebels and their supportive outfits,” intelligence records with Bihar police say.

The stations “under the control” of the rebels, according to the records, include Nawada, Nadaul, Taregna, Jehanabad and Makhdumpur on the Patna-Gaya section, Jamui, Lakhisarai and Simultala on the Bengal border on the Kiul-Patna section and Koderma, Hazaribagh Road and Daltonganj on the Patna-Palamau sections.

Two of the four Rajdhani trains that pass through this “Red zone” leave from Howrah and Sealdah.

Security sources conceded that the Maoists, armed with “sophisticated weapons and trained in guerrilla warfare”, were in a position to challenge government forces and beat them in areas described as “resistance zone” in rebel lexicon.

“We are not in a position to deploy forces at all railway stations for we don’t have sufficient forces,” Bihar police chief Anand Shankar openly admits.

At a recent meeting with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, too, the DGP had complained about “insufficient forces” at his disposal.

Highly placed sources in the railway police said the government had “consistently ignored” that Maoists were “building their might around railway property”.

Before besieging the Rajdhani at Banstala, Jhargram, yesterday, Maoist rebels had blown up Banshipur railway station near Lakhisarai on the Patna-Jamui-Kiul section on October 12.

A day later, the guerrillas blew up tracks near Jamui railway station.

Officials said blasting stations, exploding tracks and removing fish-plates, which can derail a train, were a “matter of routine and will” for the Maoists in large parts of central and south Bihar, Jharkhand and adjoining areas in Bengal.

Security officials admitted that it was hard to counter the rebels who, as part of their well-rehearsed plans, come in small groups of eight to 10 armed with explosives and assault rifles but accompanied by thousands of people.

“The security forces simply get blind at the sight of the huge mass of people guided by trained guerrillas,” said an official.

“The Centre will have to raise specially trained forces and evolve an effective mechanism of warfare against the Maoists. Otherwise, the Maoists will continue to call the shots,” the official added.

“We are at the mercy of the Maoists,” conceded a senior railway official.