Underground network of Naxals identified, five masterminds named: Report

The IB has submitted the names of the five masterminds of Naxals to the Home Ministry.

NEW DELHI: In a significant development, the intelligence agencies have identified the underground network of Naxalites and their masterminds operating in various cities of the country.

According to a Zee Media Exclusive report, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has submitted a detailed report to the government on the country-wide underground network of banned CPI-M Naxals.

IB, in its report to the Home Ministry, said that five alleged masterminds of this underground network of Naxals have been identified after monitoring their activities for a long time.

The IB has also submitted the names of the five masterminds to the Home Ministry. 

According to reports, a professor from Nagpur, an advocate, a journalist and a social activist are among those named in the IB report to the Home Ministry.

The names of these persons have not been disclosed due to security reasons.

In its two-page report, the agency claimed to have gathered credible actionable inputs against those named by it over their alleged involvement in Naxal-related activities and their role in last year's violence in Bhima-Koregaon.

The agency also claimed that there was credible evidence indicating the financial transactions between the banned CPI-M Naxals and the pro-Naxal outfits.

Intelligence agencies had earlier warned that several suspected Naxal sympathisers were trying to establish a close link between the CPI-M Maoists and various terror outfits active in the Kashmir Valley.

Intelligence sources said that pro-Naxal groups or the Urban Naxals have been covertly trying to establish close contacts with the terrorist outfits in Jammu and Kashmir for quite some time now.

The assessment done by the intelligence agencies was based on inputs received from various sources in Kashmir and the letters seized by the Maharashtra Police as part of its ongoing probe into the Bhima-Koregaon violence last year.

The letters seized by the Maharashtra Police has revealed the Naxal link with Kashmiri Separatists and their keen interest in the financial support being received for terror activists in the Valley. 

Based on these inputs, the intelligence agencies had warned that there is a clear evidence which shows that separatist and terror organisations are being directly supported and funded by Urban Naxals in the several cities.

As part of their plan to further strengthen its network in J&K, 15 members of a pro-Naxal outfit had visited parts of Kashmir in May this year, the agencies said.

The members of the group secretly visited several areas including Anantnag, Badgam, Baramulla, Kupwara and Shopian in the north and south Kashmir.

The group also collected details of the terror-related cases pending in the various courts here and devised a strategy to deal with them legally.

The group members had collected facts and figures related to various encounters done by the security forces in Kashmir so as to build a strong human rights violation case against them at the international level.

The strategy of the pro-Naxal groups is to build maximum pressure on the Centre and the state government and expose them at the international level, the reports said.

The alarming revelations from the intelligence agencies came a day after Maharashtra Police detained several prominent Maoist sympathisers following massive raids across various locations on Tuesday.

Maharashtra Police had on Tuesday raided the homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least four of them for suspected links with the Maoists.

Near-simultaneous searches were carried out at the residences of prominent Telugu poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Farreira in Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in New Delhi.

Subsequently, Rao, Bhardwaj and Farreira were arrested. Although Navalakha was also arrested, the Delhi High Court ordered police not to take him out of the national capital at least until Wednesday.

According to unconfirmed reports, others whose residences were raided are Susan Abraham, Kranthi Tekula, Father Stan Swamy in Ranchi and Anand Teltumbde in Goa.

The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year. 

As part of its probe into the Bhima-Koregaon violence, the Pune Police had seized two letters exchanged by Maoists detailing their plans to eliminate Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah and Union Minister Rajnath Singh.   

The raids conducted by the Maharashtra Police were severely criticised by the civil rights groups and the opposition parties which likened it to a virtual declaration of Emergency in the country.