The Crime Branch of Delhi Police arrested Soni Sodi,who is wanted by the Chhattisgarh Police for acting as a conduit between Maoists and Essar group,from Katwariya Sarai area of south Delhi on Tuesday morning. Police said she had arrived from Jaipur in the morning. After getting a tip-off,the Chhattisgarh Police had raided the house of a human rights activist in Jaipur on Monday. She is the 11th Maoist leader to be arrested from the national capital in the past three years. Earlier,the police had arrested the groups ideologue Kobad Ghandy from south Delhi in 2008. According to the police,Soni was picked up from a bus stand where she was waiting to meet one of her accomplices. The Chhattisgarh Police had written to us five days back that Soni was wanted in connection with some criminal cases lodged there and that she could be hiding in Delhi. We developed intelligence and arrested Soni when she was waiting near a bus stand around 11 am on Tuesday. She was not carrying any luggage,and no belongings were recovered from her, said Sanjay Bhatia,Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (crime). We had specific information that she was hiding somewhere in south Delhi, said the officer. The Chhattisgarh Police will seek her remand tomorrow. A city court sent Soni in judicial custody for a day,and she will be lodged in Tihar jail. Soni is among the few tribal girls who are educated. She studied at Mata Rukmani Seva Sansthan,Dantewada. Coming from an influential family her uncle was a CPI MLA she actively participated in political activities,taking up peoples cause before the police. I knew her when she was studying at the Sansthan. I would visit the school and teach her, said Himanshu Kumar,who ran Vanvasi Chetna Ashram in Dantewada before shifting to Delhi. While the Chhattisgarh Police said she had been on their radar for long,she was first named an accused in the Naxal attack on Congress leader Avadesh Kumar Gautam in July 2010. She,incidentally,was not arrested and continued to work as superintendent of a government school at Jabeli. According to the police,the vehicle of her husband Anil Putane was used in the attack. But her relatives point out that his vehicle was elsewhere at the time of the incident. Himanshu claimed that her arrest was due to a professional rivalry. Gautam was a contractor. When Soni was getting her school building constructed,she did not let him get the contract. As all political parties are hand-in-glove in that area,it annoyed them. Sonis father Madru Ram Sodi,70,was shot at by Naxals in June this year. Her elder brother Sahdev Sodi contested election for the upadhyaksha post of Kuakonda block panchayat a few years ago against Gautams wife,who eventually won the poll,which witnessed police firing and alleged rigging.
