‘Dead’ Maoist leader held from Kolkata with 2 others

A young Maoist leader who was presumed killed in a gun battle with security forces about two years ago has been arrested from north Kolkata.

Abhishek Mukherjee, alias Aranya, was one of the most-wanted leaders of the CPI-Maoist and a close associate of slain Maoist leader Kishenji. He was declared a "martyr" on the website of the banned outfit in 2010 but was held late on Tuesday by the Special Task Force of the Kolkata police when he was attending a secret meeting.

Mukherjee was the secretary of the Kolkata city committee of the Maoists but he was declared dead after a shootout with joint security forces in the Junglemahal area of West Midnapore district in March 2010.

STF source said that Mukherjee and two other Maoists - Nil alias Sushil Mondal, 25, and Sameer, 51 - were arrested while holding a secret meeting in Tala Park in north Kolkata. Incriminating documents and proof of communication between the Maoists, a gun and some ammunition were also allegedly recovered from the three men, the sources said.

Mukherjee's wife Debolina Chakraborty has been in jail for two months now. She is allegedly a key leader of the women's wing of a frontal organisation of the Maoists. As the public face of the outfit, she has been holding rallies and organising demonstrations in the city. The couple were studying international relations in Jadavpur University and are believed to have married secretly.

Mukherjee, now aged around 31 years, was considered to be a bright student at the university and had even passed the UPSC's preliminary IAS exam in 2005-06. He had joined the university in 2001 and was apparently drawn to Left extremists and dropped out of his post-graduation course.

His parents had said that he got disillusioned and entangled in the Singur-Nandigram campaign which was snowballing at that time. By 2007 he was deeply involved in the movement and went underground after March 14 that year when 14 people were killed in police firing in Nandigram.

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