The Kerala Police said they have intensified their efforts to “deny any operational base” to the armed comrades of arrested Maoist leader Roopesh.
The remnants of Roopesh’s unit were believed to be bivouacked in a forested area in north Kerala.
The combatants sustained themselves by drawing succour from tribal colonies and Maoist sympathisers in nearby towns, investigators said.
An official identified the prominent members of the unit as Vikram Gowda, Mahesh, alias Jayanna, A. Suresh, Latha, Kanya, alias Kanyakumari, and Sundari, alias Geeta. He said they hailed from Malnad region in Karnataka.
Inventory of armsThe police hoped that Roopesh’s arrest would shed light on the Maoists inventory of arms and the provenance of their assault rifles and matching ammunition.
They want to know whether the Maoists possessed workshop-grade anti-personnel weapons such as locally made and remotely triggered rockets, landmines, and wayside bombs.
The information could help them better calibrate their ongoing special operations to stop the irregular force from becoming a permanent armed Maoist menace in the expansive forested area known as the Northern tri-junction of the contiguous States of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka.
Aim of unitOfficials said the Maoists aspired to exert territorial control over the area to establish a corridor that would link them logistically to their armed bases in rural north India, chiefly Jharkhand.
The activists were members of the Kabani Dalam attached to the Western Ghats Special Zonal Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
The committee was formed in 2014 with the singular aim of emancipating (through armed struggle) tribal and Scheduled Caste communities and landless farmers marginalised by rapid economic development in Erode, Coimbatore, Palakkad, Kochi, Kozhikode, and Mangaloru.
The police have attributed at least 20 crimes reported in north Kerala to the group. The alleged offences included firing upon the police in a Wayanad forest last December, torching a local policeman’s motorbike, distributing pamphlets exhorting armed struggle, destruction of mining equipment, and ransacking of private forest lodges.
