6 Maoists held in Gondia ahead of Chidambaram visit

A day ahead of Union home minister P Chidambaram’s visit to Gadchiroli in Maharashtra’s naxal belt, the Gondia police announced that they have arrested six suspected Maoists.

On Monday, they revealed that they arrested five alleged Maoists on Sunday, including two suspected senior state committee members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoists). Their interrogation led the police to arrest one person from Chandrapur. The police termed it a breakthrough that could help them crack the rebels’ urban links.

“We have got some crucial leads from them, including an important letter that they were supposed to hand over to one Shailesh Wakade in Chandrapur,” Gondia superintendent of police Suez Haque said. Based on this information, the police on Monday arrested Wakade in Chandrapur.

The police identified the other five as Bhimrao Mandal Bhowate, 42, and his wife Sunanda, 36, both residents of Amravati; Gangaram Poretti, 32, who is said to be the sarpanch of Patanwari village in Rajnandgaon district in Chhattisgarh; Chandramani Walde, 37, of Patanwari; and Sanjay Banjara, 30, from Churiya village, also in Rajnandgaon. The police strongly suspected that Bhowate and his wife, who originally hail from Chandrapur, are senior members of the CPI (Maoist) state committee. A local court has remanded all six in police custody till January 5.

Haque said the police suspected Bhowate’s hand in the distribution of Maoist pamphlets in Nagpur slums a few days ago. He was optimistic that the arrests would yield some important leads about the urban links of the Maoists, particularly in and around Chandrapur. He, however, did not divulge the contents of the letter that was recovered from Bhowate. The police believed they were returning from a meeting of the state committee along the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border in Rajnandgaon district.

The police said they intercepted a Maruti Omni near Deori on the national highway on suspicion and arrested Bhowate and the other four. They also recovered some naxal literature from them.
Meanwhile, ahead of home minister P Chidambaram’s Gadchiroli visit on Tuesday, the Maoists on Monday burnt a village Panchayat building in Murgumgaon in the northern parts of the district and torched a motor-bike of a local doctor in the southern parts.