Hardcore Naxal 3 others held

Nagpur, May 9 (UNI) The police nabbed four suspected Naxalites, including a divisional secretary, wanted in at least four states, and recovered arms, ammunition and other material from them here.

Speaking to newspersons here today, Police Commissioner S P S Yadav said the four Naxalites, identified as Mahesh alias Murali alias Ashok Satya Reddy (45), Arun Thomas Parreira (35), Dhanendra Shriram Bhurale (35) and Naresh Babulal Bansod (42), were nabbed from Deekshabhoomi here last evening.

All the four, suspected to be actively associated with the Communist Party of India (Maoist), have been remanded in police custody till May 16 by a local court, he said.

Of these four, Murali, originally from village Nirmalagiri in Nalgonda district in Andhra Pradesh and now a resident of Deori in Bhandara district in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, is a hardcore Naxalite, Mr Yadav said. Murali, who has been associated with the Naxalite movement for the last 15 years, is the divisional secretary of the Gondia-North Gadchiroli committee, and has several offences registered against him in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, Mr Yadav said.

Parreira is suspected to be the communications expert of the Naxalites, Mr Yadav said.

He said the police had seized a 9 mm pistol, two magazines and 16 rounds, a pen drive, a mobile telephone, two VCDs, an MP3 compact disc, a note pad, among other things and Rs 1,973 in cash from them.

The police suspect that the four were planning to create disturbances across Maharashtra and were conspiring to incite passions over the killing of four members of a Dalit family in village Khairlanji in Bhandara district and over farmers' suicides in the region, on the tenth anniversary of the desecration of a statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar in Ghatkopar in Mumbai.

He, however, refuted reports that the Naxalites were conspiring to trigger blasts at ''Deekshabhoomi'' itself.

Mr Yadav said the Central intelligence agencies as well as the police departments of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh had been alerted about the arrests. A team of policemen from Andhra Pradesh is already in Nagpur to interrogate the suspects, while those from the other two states are likely to come here shortly, he said.

UNI