The police seized several castings, believed to be used by Maoist cadres for making hand grenades, rockets and other materials used for fabricating rocket launchers, during raids on their weapon fabrication units, being run in the guise of workshops, in Mumbai on Thursday.
The Mumbai police, who conducted the raids following information furnished by the Andhra Pradesh police, took into custody four Maoist cadres including two women.
They were Arka Paru Bai alias Laxmi, wife of Chekka Sivaramakrishna (arrested during raids on a Maoist workshop in Bhopal in 2007); Dinesh Wankhede, a Maoist District Committee member of Maharashtra; his wife Kalam Sumanta, and Asim Kumar Bhattacharya.
While Arka Parun Bai is a native of Beersaipet of Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh, Dinesh hails from Nagpur and Sumanta from Gadchiroli, police sources said.
The Mumbai raids were in continuation of the high-profile arrest of a senior most Maoist leader Sadanala Ramakrishna in Kolkata along with four others on Wednesday. In the Kolkata raids also, the police busted two ‘workshops' where rocket launchers, hand grenades and other improvised explosive devices were being fabricated for transportation to Chhattisgarh.
