On Friday, the Chhattisgarh police arrested Dharmendra Chopra, a prominent businessman, near the airport here as he was rushing to catch a Delhi flight.
Thereafter the police claimed that a “massive urban network” of Maoists was detected. Chopra and his nephew Neeraj, who was arrested the previous day, were allegedly looking after the financial and logistics interests of Maoists in the State.
The police said the two were facilitating supplies of consumables, delivering lakhs of rupees to other States to fund purchase of weapons and “fixing deals” between mining companies and Maoist leaders. Interestingly, the businessman was arrested while he was travelling in the vehicle of Kanker MP Sohan Potai.
Additional Director-General (Intelligence) Mukesh Gupta said the administration wanted to send out a message to Maoist sympathisers through these arrests. “We will break this nexus that has become another power structure controlling mining or local politics to virtually everything in rural areas… We will probe the nature of wealth growth and find out the source.”
However, Mr Gupta parried a question whether Chopra’s political clout had prevented the police from arresting prominent members of Chhattisgarh’s business community earlier. “There was absolutely no political pressure and no one called me regarding these arrests,” he said.
Mr. Potai said he knew the businessman well. “I interact with his family. I visited his house earlier. But every one [in Bhanupratappur] knows him, so you can’t single me out. However, I do not know if he was arrested in my vehicle as I had reached the airport and left Raipur earlier,” the MP told The Hindu on the phone from New Delhi, where he is attending the BJP’s National Council meeting.
Mr. Potai also objected to the manner in which another accused, Sukhnath Nureti from Purundi, was arrested. “The police have picked him up in the most brutal manner, entering his house.” But the police said Nureti was a key intermediary of the rebel leader of north Bastar, Balmurli Narayan Rao alias Prabhakar. “Anyone keen on meeting Rao, including the Chopras, had to go through Nureti,” police sources said.
Five others, all from far-flung villages in Bastar, have been arrested in the past one week.
