Maoists find Pune an important,opinion-making city: ATS

Anuradha is top CPI (Maoist) leader Kobad Ghandy’s wife. She was mostly involved in Maoist propaganda in urban areas. She is also believed to be one of the founders of CPI(Maoist) in Maharashtra. She died on April 12,2008.

Her views on Pune,which Chandaliya claimed she discussed with him in 2007,describe how the Maoists came to recognise the importance of the city.

After the arrest of Angela Sontakke,the self-proclaimed general secretary of the Golden Corridor Committee of CPI(Maoist),and six others including KKM members in 2011,the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) interrogated Chandaliya as a witness and recorded his statement.

As per the statement,Chandaliya was introduced to Anuradha in 2007 by a Mumbai-based writer,Sudhir Dhawale,who was arrested by the Gondia police in 2010 on charges of sedition. At their meeting in Mumbai’s Ruia College,Anuradha had asked Chandaliya several questions regarding Pune.

‘Urban perspective’ of the Maoists

A document,“Urban perspective”,believed to have been released by the CPI(Maoist) a few years ago,describes urban areas as “centres of the enemy” and states that work in urban areas has special importance in revolutionary work.

The document broadly describes three tasks while working in towns and cities. The first and the main task is to organise the working class,students and intellectuals among others to deal with the problems of women,Dalits,minorities and labourers,and mobilise them for their ‘revolutionary movement’. The second task is to form ‘united fronts’,which includes unifying the working class,

building fronts against globalisation,religious fascism and

repression. The third is military tasks or urban militia,which will initially complement rural armed struggle,like arranging logistic support,infiltrating

enemy organisations and recruiting the urban youth for jungle warfare.

Pune-Ahmedabad corridor on target

The document suggests Maoist plans of “urban work” in the Pune-Ahmedabad corridor that covers other big cities and towns like Mumbai,Navi Mumbai,Thane,Nashik,Surat and Vadodara. Maoists consider these areas to be more industrialised and urbanised,with a diversified working class who have migrated from different parts of the country.

According to a senior intelligence officer,Maoists are losing their support-base in their usual domains and are looking towards the cities.

They look at Pune in a special way because it is an educational and cultural hub,having a healthy ever-growing population of students and youngsters belonging to varied financial backgrounds. Besides,there is also a considerable number of labourers in the city,along with big slum areas.

Maoists target these sections of people and try to penetrate the intellectual groups,particularly those coming from poor and backward classes.

They see them as “potential recruits” for spreading their movement in urban belts,the intelligence officer had said,adding that as per their intelligence inputs,Maoists were targeting the newly created urban areas like Sangli and Kolhapur.

Investigation had revealed that CPI(Maoist) formed the golden corridor committee especially to work in the urban areas of western Maharashtra. Angela,who was arrested in April 2011,was operating from Pune.

As per the document,other urban centres on the Maoist radar are Delhi,being the national capital,Bangalore,the IT capital of country,Chennai,a major industrial hub in the south,the Coimbatore-Erode belt,Kolkata,a major urban centre in northeastern India,Hyderabad,Visakhapatnam and cities in central India and the Gangetic plain.

On May 30,Sushilkumar Shinde said,“We are aware that Naxals have been using urban centres,and Pune has been one of their targets. They are trying to spread their presence in other cities. There have been reports regarding their strong presence in parts of Rajasthan.”