Calcutta ‘link’ to Maoists’ arms

NISHIT DHOLABHAI
New Delhi, April 26: Sadanala Ramakrishna, the Maoist tech wizard arrested in Calcutta two months ago, has allegedly revealed how the Bengal capital was a centre for manufacturing arms and spares and supplying them deep into rebel territory in central India.

A team led by Ramakrishna, 60, bought hardware such as alternator motors, pipes, bars and plates from shops in Canning Street and Netaji Subhas Road (near Brabourne Road) and turned them into munitions and weapons parts, security agency sources said.

The rebel leader has also allegedly told his interrogators how his team sent millions of rupees in cash from Howrah station to Mumbai for their colleagues to buy necessary hardware for the Bengal arms-making units.

Ramakrishna lived under the alias Vivek Sharma in a flat at Mounik apartments in Birati, which he had bought for Rs 10.5 lakh by producing a fake PAN card “prepared and given by the party”, the sources said.

He has apparently spilled the beans on 11 hardware suppliers from whom the Maoists procured their material and nine transporters through whom they supplied the goods.

Ramakrishna was arrested on February 29 in central Calcutta by a joint Bengal and Andhra Pradesh police team along with four others: Dipak Kumar of Chhattisgarh, and Sukumar Mondal, Shambhu Pal and Bapi Mudi, residents of districts around Calcutta.

A mechanical engineer from Warangal, Ramakrishna was secretary of the Maoists’ technical research arms manufacturing (Tram) unit of the central technical committee.

The unit repaired AK-47s and .3158mm carbines and fabricated high-precision spares of rocket launchers, rockets, grenades and self-loading rifle magazines, Ramakrishna has allegedly revealed. Guns and rifles with snags were ferried from Chhattisgarh to the city for repairs.

The Maoists’ procurement of spares was inconspicuous, with the police never suspecting for years that the seamless pipes, mild steel bright bars and mild steel plates from Calcutta shops were ending up as parts of rockets that reached Abujh-Maadh in Chhattisgarh.

Ramakrishna has allegedly revealed that the rebels sent LRs (loading receipts) to one Vikram, who used to come to Calcutta on their requests, made over the phone, to Prabhakara or Balmuri Narayan Rao, an aide to CPI (Maoist) general secretary Ganapathy.

This year alone, over Rs 75 lakh received from central India was apparently sent to Mumbai from Howrah station through Vikram ---- Rs 40 lakh on January 17 and Rs 35 lakh on February 21.

While Ramakrishna used the alias Vivek Sharma when he went to a government hospital, he was S.V. Kasturi while travelling on a train. He travelled sleeper class four times between Mumbai and Howrah between September 24 last year and January 19 this year, the sources said.

One of the rebels’ key people in Mumbai was Asim Kumar Bhattacharya, who lived in Dombivli, a suburb near Kalyan, the rebel leader allegedly said.

“I visit Mumbai to supervise his work,” Ramakrishna was quoted as telling his interrogators.

Bhattacharya apparently procured the “required material” from Mumbai and sent them to Raipur through transport companies. He is believed to be the brother of Adilabad resident Tusharkanti Bhattacharya, a Maoist leader now in an Andhra jail.

The central technical committee coded its production units in different states –- the one in Bengal being S6. Some other units are located in Andhra, Bihar, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Source http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120427/jsp/nation/story_15424600.jsp

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