A month after the arrest of Kobad Ghandy, authorities have arrested an agricultural scientist who briefly studied for a doctorate degree at Delhi’s PUSA institute, and his wife, for alleged Naxal links. According to authorities, Ravi Sarma, 47, and B Anuradha, 45, are experts in ambushing police convoys and carried out some of the most gruesome killings of officials in the Bihar and Jharkhand region, including some recent ones in Maharashtra.

The arrests come at a time when Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has been stressing that the civil society must stop “romanticising Naxals” or seeing them as “bulwarks against capitalism” but judge them in the context of “mountain of violence”.

Sarma, allegedly a key Maoist leader and ideologue operating under several aliases like Amar, Anand and Mahesh, was arrested near Patna junction on October 10 by an Andhra Pradesh Police team, but slipped from custody while being taken back. Three days later, he along with Anuradha were was re-arrested by the Jharkhand Police. They were sent to jail on Wednesday. “We are going to take them on remand soon,” Hazaribagh SP Pankaj Kamboj told The Indian Express, adding that a laptop and several CDs had been seized from them.

Kamboj said the arrests were a big blow to the Maoists. According to Andhra officials, Sarma and Anuradha virtually ran the Naxal network in Bihar and Jharkhand since 2001. “In the last few years they toured the states and knew the region like the back of their hands. That is why they were so successful,” say officials.

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