Following a court directive, top Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy was interrogated this evening in the presence of his lawyer at the special cell police station in New Delhi.
Lamenting the recent killing of innocent civilians by Maoists, Home Minister P Chidambaram said the Communist Party of India (Maoist) should "abjure violence and come forward for talks".
The Communist Party of India-Maoist denied their involvement in the Thursday's carnage in which 16 people were killed in Bihar's Khagaria district. "It is certainly not the operation carried out by our cadres... and we are still not aware who perpetrated the violence," a senior CPI-Maoist leader, pleading anonymity, told a group of mediapersons.
The banned Communist Party of India - Maoist has threatened to kill Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar if two of their top leaders were not released from prison immediately, official sources said on Friday. 'Dabloo', a naxalite leader, in a sms to a reporter of a private TV channel, claimed that the Maoists planned to kill the chief minister, State Home Department Principal Secretary Amir Subhani said. The message demanded the release of Naxal leaders 'Raviji' and Diren Singh.
His arrest has created a sensation, given his affluent origins in Mumbai and his elite Doon School -- where he was Congress leader Sanjay Gandhi's classmate -- and London education. Ghandy is an intellectual supporting the Maoists in various ways, and has no criminal record whatsoever.
Kobad Gandhi, a CPI-Maoist Polit Bureau member, was apprehended by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police on Sunday night following an input received from intelligence agencies, they said. Police sources, however, refused to divulge from where he was arrested.
The alleged encounter killing of Communist Party of India Maoist leader Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad took a new twist on Saturday after it was revealed that the other 'Maoist leader' killed in the encounter was actually a freelance journalist from Delhi. The man has been identified as Hemchandar Pandey, 32, a resident of Dewaltal village in Pithorgarh in Uttarkhand. Pandey was a freelance journalist working in Delhi.
A top leader of the Communist Party of India -Maoist has gone missing and the organisation suspects that he is in the custody of special investigations bureau of Andhra Pradesh police.
The outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoists) is planning to step up its offensive by exploiting the situation arising out of the current global economic downturn even as it is apprehensive that the Centre could unelash a military offensive against the movement.
Arrested Communist Party of India-Maoist spokesperson Gaur Chakraborty was on Wednesday remanded in police custody for 14 days, even as another member of the group and his wife were nabbed in Bankura district on charges of waging war against the state.
It is time for the government to have a re-think on the way we have been dealing with this problem in order to have a tailor-made strategy based on improvement of political management, strengthening rural policing and rural intelligence and developing capacities for rural operations with emphasis on mobile as well as on static security.
"This is applicable for the entire country, all states and we have accepted it. But how to implement it is the government's business," Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told media persons after a cabinet meeting in Kolkata.
'We are ready for talks with the Centre and West Bengal Government if the intellectuals, who visited the troubled Lalgarh area last Sunday, arrange for a meeting,' CPI-Maoist leader Sagar said in a statement.
The outfit also added that the People's Liberation Guerilla Army into the People's Liberation Army.
According to the police, CPI-Maoist central committee member Sande Rajamouli alias Prasad was killed in an exchange of fire with a special police party in the vicinity of Dharmavaram railway station at 10 pm.
While the official media is silent on the issue, Chinese blogs and websites are much kinder to the banned Maoist rebels, writes China expert D S Rajan.
The central committee of the banned Communist Party of India - Maoist had decided to eliminate Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Laxmananda Saraswati as he was opposing them in Kandhamal, according to the confessions of an arrested Maoist commander, who was allegedly involved in the killing in August last year.P Rama Rao alias Uday, arrested on April 20 from Raygada district, told interrogators that he was part of the 16-member Maoist team that gunned down Saraswati.
At least five persons, including four policemen, were killed and three injured on Sunday evening when cadres of the Communist Party of India-Maoist attacked the police station at Jajha railway station in Bihar's Munger district. The Maoists looted the entire stock of arms and ammunition from the police station. Top district officials as well as railway officials had rushed to the spot.
Communist Party of India-Maoist guerrillas on Thursday shot dead six persons of rival naxalite outfit, Sashastra People's Morcha, in Bihar's Rohtas district, the police said. The victims, involved in armed resistance against the CPI-Maoist, were renegade members of the organisation. The police denied that those killed were police informers.
'Our Left is squeamish about democracy. They are so mechanical they have only dogma.'
The Centre rubbished the claims of a Maoist leader to overthrow the Indian state before 2050 saying they are free to "dream" and asserted that talks can happen only when they abjure violence.
A police officer and a Maoist were killed and two others injured in a gunfight between the security forces and the ultras at Sarenga in Bankura district, the police said on Thursday.A group of armed Maoists shot at and injured local Communist Party of India - Maoist leader Tarashankar Patra late on Wednesday night. On getting the information, police and joint forces rushed to the spot, and a gun-battle ensued.
The senior most leader of the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist in Andhra Pradesh K Ilaiah alias Sambasivudu, who surrendered before the police on Sunday night, said that he took the decision to come out of the underground movement because of his ill health and loss of interest in the armed struggle.
A new outfit calling itself M2 and claiming to support the Hindus and tribal people has surfaced in Orissa, raising doubts on whether the Maoist cadre in the state are divided. The outfit came out in support of the Hindus and tribal people after the Communist Party of India-Maoists claimed responsibility for the murder of religious leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati in August.
Suspected Communist Party of India-Maoist activists blew up a railway track on Tuesday morning in Bihar's Begusarai district under Samastipur division of East Central Railway Services on Barauni-Katihar rail route.
Police recovered about 400 kg of explosive material, suspected to have been hidden by the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist for making landmines and bombs, on Monday in Bihar's Gaya district.
Talking tough a day after the beheading of a Jharkhand police officer, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said the security forces will engage the Maoists till they abjure violence and the air force will take steps to protect itself from any Naxal attacks.
Kobad Gandhy, a politburo member of the banned Communist Party of India -Maoist, on Wednesday alleged that he was kept in illegal detention for four days in the national capital before police recorded his arrest on September 21.
After arresting a top Naxal leader, investigators are on the trail of some Maoist leaders believed to be hiding in Delhi, police sources said on Tuesday.Kobad Gandhi, 63, a politburo member of the Communist Party of India - Maoist, was arrested by the Special Cell of Delhi police from Bikhaji Cama Place on Sunday night, following an input received from intelligence agencies."We believe that this arrest will lead to more arrests of Naxal leaders," said a police official.
The Communist Party of India-Maoist on Tuesday finally broke its silence over the tragic death of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy. The outlawed organisation described his death as the end of an era of a 'dictator, a war lord and an undemocratic World Bank agent'.Koteshwara Rao alias Kishenji, a senior underground leader of the CPI-Maoist, dismissed the outpouring of grief across the state after YSR's demise as an orchestrated show.
Upbeat over their two major successful attacks against the police on Andhra-Orissa border in less than one month, in which more than 50 policemen were killed, the Maoist rebels are now gearing up to target the police stations to loot the arms. This warning has been issued by the central intelligence agency -- the Intelligence Bureau -- in its report assessing the overall situation of the Naxalite problem in the country.
Suspected Communist Party of India-Maoist guerrillas blew up railway tracks and a portion of government complex housing the office of the block development officer n Bihar's Naxal-hit Jamui district in the wee hours of Friday to protest the recent arrest of its self-styled area commander.
Using the 'Hot Balloon' technique, experts from the Indian Navy brought the launch to the surface on Sunday evening, exactly eight days after it had drowned in an attack by the rebels of the Communist Party of India-Maoist killing more than 30 Greyhound commandos and policemen.
Sunday's attack came a couple of days after a Naxalite strike on a Central Industrial Security Force picket in Bokaro district of Jharkhand, in which two personnel of the paramilitary force and four other persons were killed.
The Naxals have claimed that they do not have any hostages.
Superintendent of Railway Police (Jamalpur) Vimal Kumar on Tuesday said over 100 ultras detonated dynamites to damage a stretch of track in both up and down lines near the outer signal on Monday night. Rail traffic was disrupted for several hours in the Jamalpur-Malda section because of the explosion, he added.
Inspector General of Police (Operation) S K Bhardwaj told PTI that the encounter between the police and the naxalites lasted for over an hour in which over 200 rounds were fired from both the sides in which six naxalites and two policemen, including an assistant sub-inspector and a CRPF constable, were injured.