Following leads in a diary recovered from Solipeta Kondal Reddy,the secretary of the CPI(Maoist)s South Telangana zonal committee who was shot dead by the Warangal police on March 12,police recovered a huge arms cache from a house in Tanuku,in West Godavari district,over the weekend. West Godavari is connected to Khammam,which shares the border with Maoist strongholds like Dantewada in Chhattisgarh and Koraput in Orissa. Deciphering cryptic notes in Reddys diary,the police traced the house and found about 3,000 unassembled hand grenades,a dozen unassembled rocket launchers,some mortar shells,bullets,and a few small arms. Reddy is suspected to have bought the arms and ammunition from manufacturers based on the outskirts of Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu. Reddy and Shakamuri Appa Rao,a CPI(Maoist) central committee member who also shot dead in a separate encounter on the same day,were supposed to deliver the arms and ammunition to their comrades in Chattisgarh,Orissa and Jharkhand,said officials. Reddy and Appa Rao were to arrange for the cache to be delivered to hideouts in the tribal areas on the Andhra-Chhattisgarh and Andhra-Orissa border. Appa Rao was the chief of military intelligence and reported to Ganapati,Secretary,CPI(Maoist) central committee, said an official of the Special Intelligence Branch. Reddy and Appa Rao were also tasked with preparing the ground in the tribal villages on the Andhra-Orissa border where Maoist leaders and cadres escaping from the neighbouring states could cool their heels,re-arm and re-organise themselves, he added. Officials said Reddy had posed as a scrap dealer and rented two rooms which he used to store the arms. Since Reddy passed himself off as a scrap dealer,none of his neighbours or the house owner suspected that the gunny bags being brought in contained arms and ammunition. Hidden in a truck partly containing real scrap,the unassembled arms and ammunition would have passed undetected towards the border. We are trying to find out how much Reddy and Appa Rao have already delivered. We suspect that they may have supplied at least 1,000 grenades so far, said DGP R Girish Kumar. Officials said that the material to make grenades and unassembled rocket launchers was to be transported in small quantities and delivered to over 400 hideouts in tribal areas on the border,where explosive experts were to assemble them and keep them ready for delivery across the border. The plan was to use the Vizag-Koraput-Dantewada route or Khammam-Dantewada route. The Maoists have been trying to set up a strong base in Khammam,which provides easy access to Chattisgarh and Orissa. On Sunday night,four Maoists were arrested from near Kotthagudem in Khammam district. The four,including two women,were moving from village to village seeking to recruit youths for training. Appa Rao,who hails from Khanapur in Warangal,was one of the most wanted Maoist leaders. The state government had announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh for information on him. He was allegedly involved in the attack on former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu at Alipiri near Tirupati in October 2003,and killing of two police officers including DIG K S Vyas in Hyderabad in 1993. Reddy carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh. Terming their deaths as a crushing blow for Maoists,an official said the Maoists were eyeing Andhra again,hoping to re-organise themselves again and re-claim lost ground.
