The National Investigation Agency, which is investigating some six cases of Naxal activities in various States, is now on the radar of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), say government reports.
Sources say the NIA has received inputs from sister agencies suggesting that the Naxal think-tank has taken cognisance of its ongoing investigations and prosecution of suspected CPI(Maoist) cadres. “We suspect that they may devise ways to counter our efforts in bringing the Naxals to book, also through front organisations. Be that as it may, we maintain a high level of professionalism and our endeavour is to gather evidence that can stand the scrutiny of even international courts,” an official said confirming that the NIA had figured in the recent CPI(Maoist) documents.
“The cases were earlier being probed as individual incidents. However, the NIA’s approach has been to join the dots and through sound evidence, establish a chain: from the Naxal cadres executing the operations on the ground to the people involved in planning and those at the top who conceive the attacks,” the official added.
Among the important cases — transferred by the governments of Odisha, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Bihar – is one against Sadula Ramakrishna and eight others for being part of the banned outfit’s “Technical Research Arms Manufacturing (TRAM)” unit.
“Investigations revealed that in July 2001, the outfit set up a central technical committee to acquire expertise in weapon manufacturing. They then constituted TRAM in 2005. Sadula, being an engineer, allegedly played a crucial role. The units were set up in Rourkela, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar andIndore.
The accused got components manufactured in bulk separately at places in West Bengal and Mumbai and supplied them for configuration of at least 1,000 rocket launchers. Another case pertains to a July 2012 seizure of 76 finished and 1,588 unfinished crude grenade shells from West Bengal. The shells were allegedly meant for supply to a TRAM unit then operating in Jharkhand,” the official said.
