The recent arrest of two former University of Hyderabad (UoH) students, Chandan Kumar Mishra and Ankala Prithvi Raj, created unrest among the police on the activities of CPI-Maoist in some popular universities and professional colleges.
It is their attempts to build their cadre with educated youth that is causing a consternation among the cops. Mr. Mishra and Prithvi Raj, have been in touch with Maoists for the last five years and they met several top Naxalites in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and other States, according to the police.
The two Maoist fresh recruits met many students of various professional colleges in Hyderabad, Warangal, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and other places to spread the extremist ideology and attract more youth into their fold.
“Earlier, the erstwhile People’s War Group (PWG) used to visit engineering and medical colleges and recruit students by singing revolutionary songs. Now, the arrest of the two students by the East Godavari police confirm the movement of the open cadre Naxalites in some universities, and the arrests alerted us over the fresh recruitments,” a police officer said.
“Mishra and Prithvi Raj were working as open cadre and helping the Maoists in recruiting youth from different colleges for the banned outfit. There is no doubt that Maoists, who received major blows in the recent exchange of fires are regrouping, particularly in the Telugu States,” the officer said.
Police are collecting the phone call data of the two students and their laptop contacts, if any, to know their network. Intelligence sleuths are trying to find out whether the open cadre activists maintained any hideouts in Hyderabad, Vijayawada and other places in the two States.
Shock for police
“This is an election year and our investigation agencies of different branches are busy with the political developments. Taking it as an advantage, Maoists started attracting students from universities and colleges to strengthen their movement,” a top police officer told The Hindu .
“When the police officers thought that Maoists are on the wane, the fresh recruitments undertaken by the Maoist State and Central committees in educational institutions came as a rude shock. With the inputs from our agencies, we sounded an alert,” the police officer added. Interestingly, former DGP N. Sambasiva Rao recently said Naxals were not in a position to retaliate during the Ramaguda encounter anniversary and asserted that the police had control over the situation.
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