Couple heading Maoist movement in Kerala

A husband-wife duo heads the Maoist movement in Kerala, investigations have revealed.

Kerala police sources said the recent arrest of two Maoist operatives -- Sikin and Sivaraman -- from rural areas of Palakkad district revealed that Roopesh and his wife Shiny, who are both in hiding, were heading the Maoist movement in the state.

Shiny, a selection-grade clerk with the Kerala high court, had been arrested a couple of years ago by the Kochi police on charges of harboring some activists of the Nandigram movement who had visited Kerala .The police had also charged her with having contacts with Maoist leader Malla Raja Reddy, who was arrested in Angamaly near Aluva on December 17, 2007 along with a woman accomplice Suguna.

Sources in the state police told rediff.com that Shiny went underground after securing bail from the high court in December 2008. There have no official records of her since.

The recent

arrests have revealed that the Maoists in the state were planning a couple of operations. Their immediate agenda was to provide accommodation and shelter to the Maoists from other states like Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

Also on the agenda was an armed struggle. The husband-wife duo tied up with the Maoists in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to provide armed training to the cadres in forest areas bordering Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

A senior IPS officer, on condition of anonymity, told rediff.com that the Maoists in the state have been actively involved in networking with organisations like Students of Islamic Movement of India and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for their clandestine operations, including creating a channel for transportation of sophisticated weapons.

The officer said that Maoists are in contact with some LTTE operatives, who escaped to India after the death of the outfit's chief, Prabhakaran.