Police have arrested two student leaders close to the Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) with a cache of explosives in Sindhuli district. Rajan Basnet of Mithila Municipality-10 in Dhanusha and Purna Bahadur Bhujel of Hariharpurgadhi Rural Municipality-7 in Sindhuli were held with the explosives from Hariharpurgadhi-6 on Friday, said police. The suspects were paraded amid a press meet on Saturday. 

Basnet is the central member, while Bhujel is the Sindhuli chairman of the student organisation affiliated to the CPN. 

The security personnel seized 57 gelatins, three detonators, two digital multi-metres, two metres date cord wire, a pair of scissors and some documents from the duo. A Pulsar motorcycle (Ba 38 Pa 4286) used by the suspects was also confiscated. 

Police have intensified its security surveillance in the district with the rise in violent activities by the CPN activists in the area. 

The security personnel have been deployed in remote Hariharpurgadhi area suspecting that the CPN has made the area as “shelter” of its eastern command of Mechi, Koshi and Janakpur zones. 

Police claimed that the CPN had been using seven Kattha of land near Kalilek forest on the border between Sindhuli and Sarlahi districts as the outfit’s “military training centre”. Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Binod Sharma quoted the detainees as saying that Chanda laid the foundation stone to construct the training centre and conferred 150 people who passed the training 10 days ago. 

The CPN cadres torched equipment and vehicles belonging to a construction company on the Dharan-Chatara road on April 2, destroying properties worth around Rs 30 million. The outfit had torched a Ncell repeater tower in Marin Rural Municipality and threatened the elected people’s representatives in the local units to resign. 

DSP Sharma said the district police initiated ‘search and arrest’ strategy following a surge in violent activities by the CPN. “We will take action against those who carry out violent activities,” he said.