Roopesh, leader of the Western Ghats Special Zonal Committee, had convened a meeting in Karumanthampatti in Coimbatore to review plans for Maoists operations in the tri-junction area, police sources said on Tuesday.
Roopesh, his wife Shyna, and four of his associates, who were arrested from a bakery at Karumathampatti on Monday, were questioned on Tuesday by ‘Q’ Branch sleuths of the Tamil Nadu Police, their counterparts from Kerala and Telangana along with the Intelligence Bureau.
They were produced before Mahila Court Judge M.P. Subramaniam. Charges under Sections 124 (A) (Sedition) and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code along with Section 20 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act were invoked against the five Naxals.
Preliminary inquires had revealed that Roopesh and his associates were active in the tri-junction converging the forest belt of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. However, most of their movements were in Andhra Pradesh in the last two years. The Special Intelligence Branch (SIB) officials of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were closely tracking his movements.
While Roopesh was involved in many cases in Kerala, the antecedents of Kannan, Eswaran and Anoop were not known. Police sources said the three were also important Maoist functionaries leading a dalam (group of eight cadres) each.
Kannan of Madurai was an active member of the Maoist movement for over two decades and remained underground since 1990. When Naveen, an alleged Maoist leader, was shot dead near Kodaikanal in 2008, Kannan, son of a police constable, escaped from the scene there.
