Security guards of Maoist chief among 50 arrested in Andhra Pradesh (Lead)

Vijayawada, Nov 18 (IANS) A few hours after the killing of top Maoist Commander Madvi Hidma in Alluri Sitharamaraju district, 50 Maoists, including nine security guards of Maoist Chief Devuji, were arrested during large-scale searches in five districts of Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday.

The Maoists were arrested in Vijayawada, Kakinada, Eluru and other places in a joint operation by various wings of the Intelligence, the elite counter-terrorism unit Organisation for Counter Terrorist Operations (OCTOPUS) and police.

As many as 31 Maoists, including 21 women, were arrested from a building in Vijayawada in an operation which triggered a stir in the city.

Fifteen Maoists were arrested in Eluru.

The security forces picked up them from Green City gated community.

They were reportedly hiding there for last one week.

These Maoists are said to be in Odisha.

Two Maoists were arrested in Kakinada. Arrests were also made at a couple of other places.

The Intelligence wing OCTOPUS and police launched the joint operation in Vijayawada based on the information in Hidma’s diary seized after the encounter on Tuesday morning.

OCTOPUS and Greyhounds personnel along with local police surrounded a four-storey building at New Autonagar in Kanuru neighbourhood of Vijayawada following intelligence inputs about the presence of Maoists.

The security personnel with the bomb disposal squad conducted a thorough search and arrested the Maoists who had taken shelter.

They also seized the weapons but the details of which have not yet been declared officially.

Majority of those arrested are from Chhattisgarh.

Nine of them are members of CPI (Maoist) Central Committee Secretary Thippiri Tirupathi alias Devuji’s protection team.

Krishna District Superintendent of Police, V. Vidhya Sagar Naidu, said that the remaining Maoists were members of the battalion led by Hidma.

Hidma was Chief of battalion number one of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) battalion, which is said to be the most lethal Maoist strike unit.

Vidyasagar said that they had the intelligence information that due to anti-Maoist operations in Chhattisgarh, the CPI (Maoist) cadres entered into Andhra Pradesh and were planning to revive the movement.

Earlier, Additional Director General (Intelligence), Mahesh Chandra Laddha, said that a total of 31 Maoists were arrested from Krishna, NTR and Kakinada districts.

As a large number of migrant workers from other states, including Chhattisgarh, are employed in various factories and timber depots in and around Vijayawada, especially Autonagar, the Maoists had taken shelter so as not to arouse any suspicion.

The searches came hours after the encounter in the forests of Alluri Sitharamaraju district in the Andhra-Odisha border area, in which six Maoists, including top Commander and CPI(Maoist) Central Committee member Hidma and his wife Raje, were killed.

Facing the heat due to intensified operations by the security forces in Chhattisgarh, several Maoists from that state were believed to have entered Andhra Pradesh and truing to covert into a shelter zone.

Additional Director General (Intelligence) Laddha said that they were keeping a close watch on the movements of Maoists for the last one month.

Some Maoists and sympathisers were suspected of having moved to the interior parts of Andhra Pradesh.

Police were questioning the owner of the building in Autonagar and were trying to identify those who had given shelter to Maoists and their sympathisers.

An investigation was also conducted on whether the Maoists were planning any attacks.

Police officers said such a large number of Maoists were not arrested from any city in Andhra Pradesh, even when Maoist activity was at its peak.

–IANS

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