Hyderabad, October 13: Senior Maoist leader Ravi Sharma, said to have been picked up in Bihar by a team of policemen from Andhra Pradesh, was named as an accused in several offences including damaging public property in Hyderabad in early 1990s.
Sharma, who hails from Mahaboobnagar district, was reportedly nabbed along with his wife Anuradha in Patna in Bihar on Saturday.
The AP police, however, denied that they arrested up while the Bihar police maintained that they had no clue on who detained him.
According to police sources, Ravi Sharma, a postgraduate student of agriculture, was an active member of the Radical Students Union (RSU) and was allegedly involved in several incidents of bus-burning in and around Hyderabad and in some other districts. He is also said to have been involved in blasting buildings.
“In the late 1980s and early 90s, he was very active and a manhunt was launched for him. But he fled the city to some place in north India.
For the Maoists of Andhra Pradesh, he is a very important leader. But we have not picked him up nor do we have any information on him,’’ a senior police official said.
Sources said that after he had fled the city, Ravi, now aged around 45, became active in Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa, and the police of these four States were hunting for him.
“There was no news of him in AP after he fled,’’ the sources said, adding that they were not aware that Ravi, who is mentioned as `UG cadre’ in police records
, got married.
When contacted, a police officer of additional DGP rank in Patna, told Express that they had no clue on the arrest of Ravi and Anuradha.
“If the police from some other State had come to Patna, they would have informed us. We received no information from the police of other States.’’ Meanwhile, a habeas corpus petition was filed in the AP High Court following which Director-General of Police RR Girish Kumar was asked to submit a report within 24 hours.
According to unconfirmed reports, Ravi Sharma and Anuradha were picked up at the Patna railway station and were being brought to Hyderabad in a convoy of vehicles. It is learnt that some activists of Jharkhand Vikas Morcha stopped the convoy and thrashed some policemen.
–Agencies–