Four trucks were burnt, causing the owners to incur a loss of Rs.50 lakh. Apart from this, three mobiles towers were also set on fire.

'Jharkhand has suffered losses of thousands of crores due to the strike in the past eight and half years,' said Sharad Poddar, a member of the Jharkhand Small Scale Industries Association.

'Maoists should be rational while enforcing strike. It also affects the poor,' Poddar added.

According to the police, the strike was the 24th called by Maoist rebels this year. And since formation of the state in November 2000, they have called such strikes 105 times.

'Maoists call strike to prove their might and extort money from people,' a police official involved in anti-Maoist operations told IANS.

Maoist guerrillas are active in 18 of the 24 districts of Jharkhand. Nearly 1,500 people have been killed in Maoist-related violence in the past eight years.