Kolkata: High-profile Maoist leader Asim Mandal aka Akash has been arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police.
A central committee member and secretary of the CPI (Maoist) West Bengal State Committee-I, Mandal was tracked down and taken into custody from Purba Medinipur district.
Mandal carried a total bounty of Rs 2.20 crore on his head — Rs 1 crore declared by Jharkhand government and Rs 1.20 crore by Odisha authorities. The CPI (Maoist) leader was wanted in about 55 cases across Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
Mandal is believed to be the last surviving Maoist central committee member.
He was the ideological successor and junior colleague of the feared Kishenji (Mallojula Koteswara Rao), the leader of CPI (Maoist) until he died in 2011 in a police encounter.
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari praised his police force’s sharp technical intelligence and exceptional operational competence in arresting Mandal, who had been evading law enforcement for over 15 years across inter-state forest belts.
Adhikari said his government won’t tolerate any attempt to revive or expand the network of ‘Red Terror’ in the state.
“No extremist ideology will be allowed to jeopardise the safety & security of the People and jeopardize the development of our State. The law will take its strictest course to demolish any such audacious attempt,” Adhikari wrote on X.
Union Home minister Amit Shah told Parliament in May that the March 31 deadline for ending Left-wing extremism across the country had been met.
According to Shah, 4,839 Maoists had surrendered, 706 were killed and 2,218 arrested and jailed over the three years of heightened anti-Maoist operations.