Silchar, Oct. 26 -- A suspected Maoist leader allegedly linked to a recent blast on a railway track in Kokrajhar district of Assam was killed in a police encounter on Saturday, officials familiar with the matter said. According to Kokrajhar senior superintendent of police (SSP) Pushpraj Singh, the encounter took place in the Nandangiri area of Salakati in Kokrajhar during the early hours of Saturday. The deceased, identified as Ipil Murmu alias Rohit Murmu, sustained severe injuries during the exchange of fire, Singh further said. The SSP said that a search operation was launched on Friday night after receiving information about the presence of Maoists in the region. "....We located them in the hilly area of Nandangiri. They were in a group and suddenly attacked the police with firearms. Our team retaliated, and the others fled the area," Singh said. "We found one injured person who later died during treatment at a government hospital." "We recovered firearms and explosives from the site. There was a possibility of further attacks by this group. The investigation is ongoing," the official added. A suspected Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast had damaged nearly two feet of railway track in Kokrajhar in the early hours of Thursday, officials from the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) confirmed. The explosion occurred around 12.57am, prompting an immediate investigation by local authorities. Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, on Friday, said police have identified one suspect in connection with the incident. "The track was damaged, but we were fortunate that the goods train which passed through that section did not derail. If it had been a passenger train, the consequences could have been disastrous," he said. Police said that Murmu, a resident of Kokrajhar, had left home in 2013 to join a Maoist group in Jharkhand. "He was involved in a similar blast in Jharkhand's Sahebganj in 2024 and was also engaged in illegal activities such as extortion and kidnapping there," Singh said. Murmu's body has been sent for post-mortem examination, and police have launched an operation to trace other suspected Maoist cadres in the area....