An attempt by the Andhra Pradesh police to abduct and murder senior Maoist leader, Sudarshan alias Srinivas in a fake encounter failed last week.
Top Maoist leader Sudarshan held
One of the Maoists freed in exchange for the 2011 release of Odisha collector R. Vineel Krishna has been held in Andhra after a day's dramatic chase that saw him first jump off a police van and play a lunatic.
Sriramula Srinivas alias Sudarshan, 55, is also a key accused in the 2003 assassination attempt on former chief minister and Telugu Desam boss Chandrababu Naidu and in the murder of a state home minister, A. Madhav Reddy, three years earlier. Both attacks were landmine blasts.
Sudarshan, a native of Andhra's Nalgonda district, is a central committee member of the CPI (Maoist) and said to be eighth in the hierarchy. He is also secretary of the rebels' Andhra-Odisha Border Committee, blamed for the abduction of IAS officer and Malkangiri collector Krishna.
Sudarshan carried a bounty of Rs 20 lakh on his head, said A.V. Ranganath, the SP of Khammam, the district near the Odisha border where the chase began on Friday night and ended last evening.
Sudarshan was travelling in a Bolero with family members when the vehicle was intercepted and the rebel caught on Friday night on the basis of information that he had crossed over from Odisha for treatment.
Sudarshan was asked to get off the Bolero and made to sit in the solitary police van, with the SUV asked to follow on.
The Maoist was being brought to a police station in nearby Wyra town, around 245km from Hyderabad, when he jumped off the running vehicle and ran into a patch of maize fields along the road. The cops fired on him, injuring him in the leg, but he still managed to scamper away, police sources said.
In the melee, the Bolero also sped away and vanished into jungles near the spot. The vehicle had Sudarshan wife's Vimala, also a senior rebel leader with a Rs 6-lakh bounty on her head, and their two daughters, the sources said.
Sudarshan spent the night in the fields, by when the police had intensified the search for him and circulated his photos in Wyra town and surrounding villages. The Maoist emerged from the fields yesterday morning, and pretending to be a mad man, threw stones at villagers to prevent them from getting close to him, the sources said.
However, the theatrics of disguise ended when some of the villagers tipped off the police last evening. Sudarshan also hurled stones at the police team that went to arrest him outside Wyra town but was eventually pinned down.
His bullet wound was nursed and he was brought under heavy security to Khammam town where a magistrate remanded him in judicial custody for two weeks. Police sources said he was likely to be brought to Hyderabad and lodged in the high-security central jail.
Sudarshan was arrested in Odisha after 38 Greyhounds — Andhra's crack anti-rebel force — were killed in 2008 while crossing a reservoir at Balimela in Malkangiri. He was freed along with four others in exchange for the release of then collector Krishna in 2011. The rebel faces over 40 cases in Andhra and Odisha.
Andhra officers said many senior rebel leaders had crossed over to border towns in Andhra in recent months for treatment.
Source :
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130325/jsp/nation/story_16712147.jsp
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Naxalite Maoist India at 3/26/2013 11:13:00 AM