As Maharashtra police deepen its investigation on the link between ‘Urban Naxals’ and Naxal terrorists, more purported evidence has come to light. On Thursday the police claimed that they have evidence to prove that of the five arrested ‘activists’ had helped the banned CPI (Maoist) to plan an ambush on security forces at six locations.
This was revealed by police in the Supreme Court during a hearing on a petition filed against the arrest of the left-wing activists. Arguing on behalf of the police additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta said there is a “clear link between them and CPI (Maoist)”. He said that one of the letters recovered from the arrested activists revealed the sinister plan. This letter referred to government security as “enemy” and discussed ways to lower the morale of the forces by ambushing them.
The additional solicitor general read out a portion of the letter where the recipient of the letter was asked to provide logistics support on force deployment and movement of road opening parties. “Please take note how the author of the letter is telling about cadre not being able to move freely because of checking by security forces and seeks guidance from the recipient on conducting bigger attacks. Please note the six places they are talking about carrying out an ambush on security forces, and actually four ambushes places took place,” Mehta told the court. In another letter, a central committee member of CPI(Maoist) was ‘scolding’ the arrested the activist for not sending money.
Reiterating government’s position, Mehta told the apex court that the arrests have nothing to do with dissent as alleged by the petitioner and police had clear proof of a link between the arrested and Naxal terrorists. Anyone can dissent against the government, calling government security forces as the enemy, planning ambush on them surely cannot be termed as dissent, Mehta added.
The SC bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra gave the state police time till Saturday to submit the entire case diary and evidence gathered against the arrested activists, before reserving its verdict on the case.