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| India-Pakistan |
| Indian national agency equates Maoists with terrorists |
| 2013-04-02 |
| HYDERABAD - The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has equated ultra left wing extremists with ISI-sponsored terrorists and has listed several top Maoists among the most wanted persons. The latest list of the most wanted persons has been uploaded on the NIA website. Maoist top gun Ganapati alias Muppala Lakshman Rao, who is the Secretary of the CPI (Maoists), figures in the list. He hails from Karimnagar district in Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh. The NIA’s revised list contains the names of 56 terrorists, white collar criminals and extremists, their portraits, history of their crimes, pending cases and cash rewards on their heads. The list includes criminals and Maoists wanted in illegal arms and explosives procurement, white collar economic offences, cyber crimes. Besides Ganapati, the NIA has also listed out top Naxalite leaders Basavaraj alias Sambala Keshav Rao, Devji , Somji and Prabhakar, all of them members of the CPI (Maoists) Central Committee. The NIA has been entrusted with the case of Maoist Technical Committee Chief Sadanala Ramakrishna who was apprehended by the Kolkata Special Task Force in March 2012 along with eight other associates. They had also seized some components of rocket launchers, rocket propelled grenades and 51mm mortars and also spare parts of the latest SLRs. The NIA probe revealed that all these spare parts were secretly produced in several workshops by Maoists in Pune, Rourkela, Indore, Bhopal and Bhubaneswar. The designs for the rocket launchers were generated and supplied by Asim Kumar Harnath Bhattacharya, a Maoist activist from West Bengal. The components were manufactured in workshops between 2002 and 2006 and assembled at Chhattisgarh till 2009, NIA officials said. The investigations had also revealed that the Maoists were also hand in glove with the extremist groups of North East in procuring weapons, assault rifles, pistols, explosives and also rocket mortar shells from China. Meanwhile, revolutionary writer and Maoist sympathiser P Varavara Rao assailed the Union Home Ministry for branding Maoists as terrorists. “Maoists are political activists and not ISI-sponsored terrorists,” he said and sought clarification from the government on the NIA list of most wanted persons. |
| Posted by:Steve White |