‘Big catch’: Senior Maoist leader ‘Kanchan Da’, 72, arrested in Assam

SILCHAR: Senior leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) and a member of its central committee, Arun Kumar Bhattacharjee, better known by his nom de guerre ‘Kanchan Da’, was arrested in Assam’s Cachar district, a senior police officer said on Monday.

Superintendent of police of Cachar district Ramandeep Kaur said Bhattacharjee and an accomplice were arrested from a tea garden under Udharbond police station in a joint operation and sent to Guwajati.

Police officers said that the Maoist central committee member was in the state in an effort to set up a state-level Maoist team in Assam.

Ramandeep Kaur said the search team was split into five groups to catch Bhattacharjee from the area near the tri-junction of districts Cachar, Dima Hasao of Assam and Tamenglong district of Manipur, where he had been hiding along with his associates.

“Kanchan Da has led Maoist organisations active in areas including Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra, Odisha. We have also arrested a close associate of his, identified as Akash Urang alias Rahul alias Kajal, who is a member of the Assam state organising committee of the CPI (Maoist),” Kaur said.

“He was here to organise state party congress, recruit local cadres and purchase weapons here. We seized one laptop, a mobile phone, a huge amount of incriminating documents and ₹3.6 lakh cash from his possession,” Kaur added.

Guwahati police commissioner Harmeet Singh described Arun Kumar Bhattacharjee’s arrest as a “big catch”, according to news agency PTI.

“He is a big catch… We got information about his movements in December and he slipped through two-three operations earlier. But last evening, we were able to arrest him when he tried to hide in a tea garden,” Singh said.

Singh stressed that the effort to set up a network of Maoist cadres in Assam was at a “nascent stage” and those had been “nipped in the bud”.