Maoists suspected behind Chhattisgarh scribe`s murder

Raipur: Maoists are suspected to have killed a journalist of a Hindi newspaper in Chhattisgarh`s Bastar region, police said Wednesday.

"Nemichand Jain was stabbed to death at Leda village of Sukma district late Tuesday while he was returning from a local weekly market to his village Tongapal," Lakhan Patel, a senior police official in Sukma, told a news agency over phone. He added that Maoists were suspected behind the brutal killing as a few pamphlets were found around the body that claimed the scribe was spying for police and was also provoking local youths against Maoists. "I can`t confirm that Maoists committed the murder as the role of some local criminals can`t be ruled out. But it looks like the cold-blooded murder was done by Maoists," an official at the police headquarters here said. The journalists in Chhattisgarh, particularly those working in Maoist-infested Bastar, have strongly condemned the killing and demanded that the kin of the killed journalist be compensated. IANS