If the Maoists were to form a government in Delhi, Kobad Ghandy could easily become their globe-trotting external affairs minister.
If the Maoists, in a most improbable situation, were to form a government in Delhi, Kobad Ghandy could easily become their globe-trotting external affairs minister. His interrogators have come to the conclusion that Ghandy is the international face of Indian Maoists.
Like a typical naxalite leader, if Ghandy was providing a wealth of information to his interrogators about international linkages of Indian left-wing extremist movement, he also moved an application in a Delhi court saying he was forced to give a confession during his custody. He told the court he wanted to retract his confession.
As the interrogators too know, Ghandy has been one of the most active and influential naxalite leader of the last three decades.
He told the interrogators that in 1994, he rejoined Peoples War Group (PWG), a Maoist organisation now merged with other left-wing extremist groups, to form a unified CPI (Maoist), and started working with two persons known by their code names Vishnu and Vikram. In 1996, he visited Belgium on behalf of the party to attend a conference of Marxist-Leninist parties from 50 countries across the world.
Outside India, Ghandy used an alias of Pradeep to hide his identity. Again in 1998, he visited Frankfurt in Germany to attend a conference of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (German: Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands, MLPD).
The CPI(Maoist) played host to delegates from Turkey and Nepal at the ninth Congress held at Chhattisgarh’s Abujhmad in 2001. Ghandy was entrusted with the task of receiving them at Mumbai and bringing them to Abujhmad. Here, Ghandy was elevated to the Central Committee of the CPI(M). The following year, Ghandy was made incharge of the newly-formed central publishing bureau (CPB) of the outfit.
During the interrogation, Ghandy also shed light on the close relations between Indian and Nepali Maoists. He told about the 2003 conference of CCOMPOPSA (Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia) that took place in Punjab. The conference was held under the leadership of Nepali Maoist ideologue Baburam Bhattarai, who went on to become the finance minister in the Prachanda government after Maoists took the reigns in Kathmandu in 2008.
Ghandy was arrested from Delhi on September 20. He had been living with another CPI(M) central committee member, Balraj alias Aravind. While Ghandy landed in the police net, his comrade managed to give the security agencies the slip. Security agencies believe he was trying to hunt fresh recruits in the industrial belts of the National Capital Region (NCR), in an effort to expand the Maoist ideological base to urban centres.
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