In a big success for the anti-Naxal operation, the security forces arrested top Naxalite Prashant Bose on Thursday (November 11) in Jharkhand. Bose carried bounty of one crore rupees.
His wife, Sheela Marandi, 60, has also been arrested. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has provided the inputs about their movement.
"We arrested them in the morning when they were travelling from Parasnath in Giridih district to Saranda forest area in West Singhbhum to hold the meeting of CPI (Maoist). They were travelling in an SUV. This is an important catch for security agencies as the Bose carrying a cash prize of Rs one crore on his head was the biggest leader of the organization. He was wanted by several state police and investigative agencies”, OpIndia quoted a senior IB official.
Bose, 75, had planned to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He is wanted in the case by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The security forces were looking for him for over three decades.
A Maoist communication unearthed by the security agencies read “If this pace continues, it would mean immense trouble on all fronts… Com Kisan and a few other senior comrades have proposed concrete steps to end the Modi raj.”
It further read “We are thinking along the lines of another Rajiv Gandhi-type incident. It sounds suicidal and there is a good chance that we might fail, but we feel that the party PB/CC must deliberate over our proposal. Targeting his road shows could be an effective strategy. We collectively believe that survival of the party is supreme to all sacrifices.”
Bose is not only a key member of the Maoist Central Committee (MCC) and the Polit Bureau but is also the second in command after its general secretary Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavraj. Nambala Rao took over the Maoist leadership in November 2018.
Bose is currently heading the Eastern Regional Bureau (ERB), which includes Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha; and is considered to the architect of ‘Red Corridor’.
He is founding-member of the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI), which had merged with the Communist Party of India (Marxist – Leninist) People’s War (People’s War Group) in 2004, to form the CPI (Maoist).
His wife Sheela, who is sick since 2016, is also a member of the Central Committee, and is the only woman in the highest decision-making body of Maoists.
In another big success for the security forces, the Maharashtra Police killed 26 Maoists in an encounter in Gadchiroli district on Saturday (November 13).
Top Maoist Milind Teltumbde, who headed the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh zone of the banned CPI (Maoist), has also reportedly been killed in the encounter. Milind Teltumbde was brother of Anand Teltumbde who is an accused in the Elgar Parishad case and is lodged in Taloja jail.
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