New Delhi: Two policemen from Orissa, who had been held hostage by Naxalites, were released on Tuesday after 11 days of confinement.
Armed Naxals had kidnapped sub-inspector Ranjan Kumar Mallick and jailor Rabi Narayan Sethi on March 24 from Udaygiri town in Orissa's Gajapati district.
Over 200 Maoists had seized the town and three policemen were killed in the attack. The kidnapped officers were kept hostage at an undisclosed location on the Orissa-Andhra Pradesh border.
Rabi Narayan Sethi, superintendent of Udayagiri sub-jail, and Mallick, the officer-in-charge of the local police station, were handed over to a media team at an undisclosed place in the district, reports said.
When contacted, Gajapati district collector Binod Bihari Mohanty said the two freed policemen had been set free somewhere near Adaba. They were being taken to Ramagiri Udayagiri town, he added. Both the men were in good health and looking forward to rejoining their family members, the reports said.
The Naxalites had put forward five demands, including according political status to their arrested comrades, before the government for releasing the two hostages but apparently set them free on 'humanitarian considerations'. None of the demands had so far been fulfilled by the government.
Among other demands of the Naxals were a halt to alleged plundering of natural resources in the name of industrial development and displacing people to set up industrial units. "I am very happy to be released," Sethi told a TV news
channel.
Asked why they had been released, he said: "Don't know why they released me. But I am very happy."
Sethi, 56, said as far as he knew the demands that the Naxalites had put forward before the government for their release had not been met. Sethi said they were made to cross two hills and traverse long distances on foot before being set free. "I am very happy to be released," he said.
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