Following ‘encounter’ death of Naxal leader Vikram Gowda, Karnataka Police seek custody of ex-wife lodged in Kerala jail
Naxal Savithri separated from Vikram Gowda over ideological differences as chose to enter the mainstream.
The others accused in the 2013 case are Vikram Gowda, who was the leader of the group, and the still missing Sundari, Jayanna, and other Naxals. (File) The Karnataka Police Wednesday sought the custody of the former wife of Naxal leader Vikram Gowda, who was killed in an encounter by the Anti-Naxal Force in a village in the state’s Udupi district earlier week, in connection with their probe into two cases pending for over 10 years.
The state police moved the Karnataka High Court for the custody of Savithri, 35, in the two cases after a court in Dakshina Kannada’s Belthangady rejected their request for a body warrant for the former Naxal from the Thrissur prison in Kerala. The local court rejected the police request, saying that the cases had already reached the trial stage. The Karnataka High Court disposed of the plea indicating that an order to consider the state’s plea for a body warrant for Savithri would be issued.
“Surrender is the best policy. The government has come up with a fair and equitable surrender policy (in May 2024). There are many ways to surrender and there are different categories of surrender,” Pronab Mohanty, Director General of Police (Internal Security Division), said in a press briefing following the shooting of Vikram Gowda on November 18.
Two cases against Naxal leader Savithri
Savithri alias Usha alias Rajitha, who hails from Karnataka’s Chikamagaluru district, was the Kabini Dalam 1 commander and Area Committee member of the banned CPI (Maoist) before she surrendered to the police in Kerala in November 2021. She separated from Vikram Gowda over ideological differences as chose to enter the mainstream and Gowda — the commander of Kabini Dalam 2 — continued to hold on to a hardline Naxal stance.
Savithri, who joined the Bhavani Dalam of the Maoists as a 23-year-old, is wanted in Karnataka in connection with an attack on the home of an NGO worker in the forests in the Veroor region of Belthangady on November 9, 2013, and a similar case from 2012. Ramachandra Bhat’s house was allegedly attacked as he was involved in the rehabilitation of tribals outside the forest.
The others accused in the 2013 case are Vikram Gowda, who was the leader of the group, and the still missing Sundari, Jayanna, and other Naxals.
Though the police filed an initial C report in January 2017 indicating that the accused could not be traced, a subsequent charge sheet was filed the same year after the arrest of a suspect Ramesh alias Chenni Ramesh alias Madhava in Bengaluru in March 2017. Ramesh was, however, acquitted in October 2022 in connection with the case of the attack on Bhat’s house.
Savithri surrendered in 2021 amid mounting pressure from the police in Karnataka and Kerala on the Maoists in the forests. She surrendered along with B G Krishnamurthy alias Vijay, 50, who was the senior-most member of the Naxals in Kerala and Karnataka’s Western Ghats. Angady Suresh alias Pradeep, a Naxal from Karnataka who was in the Vikram Gowda group, surrendered to the Kerala Police in Kannur in February this year after being injured in an elephant attack in the forest.
Many of the Naxals lodged in prisons in Kerala have reportedly been trying to get their comrades who don’t want to surrender to enter the mainstream after facing the legal consequences of past crimes as per the state government’s surrender policy.
From a group of nearly 19 Naxals from Karnataka, who moved to Kerala in 2019, only five — including three women named Mundgaru Latha, Sundari, and Vanajakshi; and two men Jayanna and Ravi — are still at large. Jisha from Kerala and Ramesh from Tamil Nadu are reported to be part of the Kerala group that returned to Karnataka in February this year.
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