Illegal South Delhi colonies Maoist dens

When the Bihar Police began looking for suspected Maoist leader Ajay Kumar Singh (32), he came to Delhi in hope of a safe haven.

When the Bihar Police began looking for suspected Maoist leader Ajay Kumar Singh (32), he came to Delhi in hope of a safe haven. Singh, involved in several Maoist activities in Bihar including torching police jeeps, was allegedly given shelter by a dairy owner in Govindpuri, southeast Delhi. No tenant verification was done. Singh was arrested last Friday.

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Police say they have stepped up vigil in the unregularized and unauthorized colonies of south Delhi where the alleged Maoists are hiding and setting up a base.

In the past one year seven Maoists have been arrested from areas like Badarpur, Basant Gaon and Govindpuri. Police say verification does not help much, as such people men normally provide false details.

“The details given by these people are fake. At times, they give addresses of obsolete place, so even if we write to the local police for verification, we don’t get a response,” said an officer.

On March 22, the Andhra Pradesh police had arrested one L.S.N. Murthi (65) alias Krishna Rao, a top Maoist leader who was living in Basant Gaon area of south Delhi for the past several years as Natarajan. He had told the landlord that he worked for a publishing house that prints children’s study material. He went into hiding in September 2009 after the arrest of Kobad Ghandy, another top Maoist leader, from south Delhi.

Ghandy had been living in a decrepit colony of Molarband Extension near Badarpur border in south Delhi. He had been visiting Delhi for the past three years for medical treatment. Police had recovered a fake voter identity card from him. He apparently had 13 aliases.

Arvind Joshi, a P.hd scholar who had taken the room on rent in Molarband Extension had allegedly sheltered Ghandy.

Last year the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had alerted the state police that areas adjoining Badarpur and Faridabad were being used by Maoists to set up a base.

In May 2009, the Special Cell arrested a zonal commander of the Jharkhand-based Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) who was living in Badarpur under a fake name. Yogendra Bhokta and his two associates, Sheetal Kumar and Satish Kumar, were arrested on May 4 from Badarpur. Bhokta had allegedly rented a room on a fake name and address. He was undergoing treatment at a south Delhi hospital for an old bullet injury.