Jharkhand Jaguar security personnel at Hendegiri railway station on Wednesday. Pix: Prashant Mitra

Hendegiri (Hazaribagh), May 13: Six persons, including five railway employees and a construction company manager, were abducted by Naxalites from Keredari and Hendegiri last night.

Two of the railway men were set free by the rebels late last night, but the rest could not be traced despite daylong combing operations in the hilly forests.

Around 11pm yesterday, four armed extremists reached Hendegiri station, on the border of Ranchi, Hazaribagh, Ramgarh and Chatra districts. They caught hold of Brahmdeo Oraon, a guard on duty, and took him to the station office where assistant station master Anil Kumar was on duty.

Brahmdeo, who was spared, said that the four then asked them at gunpoint to wake up other senior officials. “The rebels then woke up station manager Lalit Prasad, deputy station master S.K. Tete and assistant station masters Rajesh Rajvanshi and Tutun Raman. They left me and took the others away,” said the visibly shaken guard.

After sometime, Rajvanshi and Raman were released. But the two did not come out of their quarters throughout the day today.

Surrounded by dense forests, Hendegiri, about 80km from Ranchi, is a village with only 30 households. At least 100 goods trains and 15 passenger trains, including the Ranchi-New Delhi Rajdhani Express and Ranchi-New Delhi Garib Rath, passes through the station on the CIC section of Dhanbad division.

The sixth victim, Bablu Singh, is a manager of Siddharth Construction Company that is building a bridge in Salga village of Keredari near Garuwa river. According to sources, the rebels abducted him first, before crossing the hill to raid Hendegiri station.

Hazaribagh superintendent of police Pankaj Kamboj said: “The abduction appears to have been executed by a small rebel outfit and not the CPI(Maoist). We have cordoned off the area,” he said after visiting the station this morning with over 1,000 policemen from Ranchi, Hazaribagh, Ramgarh and Chatra districts.

According to villagers, the abduction was the handiwork of the Tritiya Prastuti Committee, a breakaway Maoist faction. Kamboj did not rule out rasnom as a motive, even though no ransom call had been received.

Md Zeyauddin, the branch organising secretary (central) of East Central Railway Karmachari Union, demanded “fast and safe release” of the officials.