A Naxal couple, who were wanted criminals and carried a cash reward on their head had surrendered before the Hyderabad police citing ‘political differences’ and other reasons. The couple had joined the Naxal movement in 1981 and had been actively involved in recruitment and propaganda activities.
According to reports, the surrendered couple are known to be Koti Purushotham alias MK, 68, and his wife Koti Vinodhini, 63, who were members of Regional Committee for almost 31 years had carried a reward of Rs 8 lakhs and Rs 5 lakhs respectively. While Purushottam worked as a headmaster in a school, his wife worked as a teacher and they both had reportedly kept their jobs as a cover for their Naxal activities.
Interestingly, these two Naxal leaders had been arrested once in March 1991 and were released as an exchange for an abducted Youth Congress leader three months later.
Anjani Kumar, Hyderabad Police Commissioner said that the couple was managing the Agitation Propaganda Committee, a publishing unit of the CPI (Maoist). The husband-wife duo joined the PWG, which later became CPI(Maoist) and became underground cadre. They had recruited nearly 60 others to the movement and sent them to forest for training, the Police Commissioner said.
Reportedly, Purushotham despite being a ‘committed cadre’, became disgruntled about the party as he felt that he was not used appropriately and his contributions were ignored by the CPI(Maoist), the commissioner said. The police officials also said that his wife’s health and other ‘internal differences’ within the party made them leave the ideology and join the mainstream.
The coherent approach executed by the present government in tackling left-wing terror seems to be yielding results, as there is a large number of desertions in the ranks of Naxal forces, who are now surrendering for a better livelihood. The left-wing terror groups are in despair and surrendering after the massive onslaught by the government throughout the country-both in urban and tribal areas.
Coming down hard on Naxals, both in tribal and Urban areas has been one of the major achievements of the present government. We had earlier reported that how extensive and targeted action on Naxals by security agencies combined with wide-spread socio-economic development has resulted in the massive desertion of Naxals and joining the mainstream for better livelihood opportunities.
Recently, Pahad Singh, an ex-Naxal commander, in an interview to OpIndia has revealed a lot of sensational aspects of the Naxal terror network operating in both tribal and urban areas. Interestingly, Pahad Singh went on to identify Arun Ferreira, one of the arrested Urban Naxals and claimed that he had met him in a meeting of the banned CPI-Maoist.
