(From top) Nurses of the Belpahari health centre mourn for their colleague Bharati Majhi; the site of the blast. Pictures by Swarup Mondal

Belpahari, Oct. 22: A blast by suspected Maoists today killed a doctor, a newly wed nurse and the driver of their red-cross bearing car in Belpahari — the first attack in Bengal in which none of the victims was from the CPM or the security forces.

This is also the first instance of a woman being killed in the state in an explosion blamed on the extremists.

Police said the Naxalites had planted four improvised explosive devices stuffed in milk cans with the help of battery-operated flash guns that were attached to a wire.

The explosive devices were embedded in the mud path, about 2km from the Jharkhand border, in the Chowkishal jungles. The police found a 100m wire from the road that snaked into the thick bushes.

“Our investigation has revealed that the hired Tata Sumo crossed three of the crude mines. The fourth mine exploded,” said Rajesh Kumar Singh, West Midnapore superintendent of police. The area, about 250km from Calcutta, has seen several Maoist attacks.

“It appears to be handiwork of the Maoists from Jharkhand,” Singh said.

Doctor Dhaniram Mandi, 46, who was on contract with the public health centre in Belpahari town, died on the spot, as did 22-year-old nurse Bharati Majhi and Pranay Mishir, 46, the driver and owner of the Tata Sumo.

Bhushan Mahato, a labourer from Labani village sipping tea at a stall about 1km from the site, said: “I heard a loud bang and pedalled furiously on my cycle towards the spot. From a distance, I saw the remains of the car from which smoke was billowing. Mangled bodies were lying far away from it and a portion of a pink sari (of the nurse’s uniform) was hanging from a tree. I was scared and cycled back to tell a CPM leader, who informed the BDO.”

SP Singh said: “The green Tata Sumo has a red cross painted on it and is well known in the area. The car had been coming here for the past four years and is known as daktar babu’s car.”

He said the explosives were planted this morning. “Yesterday, there was heavy police presence in the area as about 150 policemen and CRPF jawans were out on a raid. The security forces left late last night. If the Maoists had wished to kill policemen or CRPF jawans, they could have done it yesterday itself,” Singh added.

The comments suggest the police think the medical vehicle was deliberately picked out for the attack.

Nurse Majhi, who was from Purulia and stayed at her quarters near the health centre, had got married two months ago.

Mandi, the doctor, stayed in a rented house in Belpahari town with his wife and four-and-half-year-old son.

Villagers near the Chowkishal jungles said a few minutes after the blast, two Hindi-speaking youths, their faces coated with dust, came on a bike to Simulpal and asked the way to Belpahari town. “We were so frightened that we pointed towards Belpahari and ran,” a villager said.

Bhaskar Pal, the block development officer of Binpur II under which Belpahari falls, said that every Wednesday, the medical team used to visit the health sub-centres in interior villages. Today the car left for Belpahari at 1pm. Half an hour later, the blast took place.