By IANS
Raipur : A letter from a Maoist leader and some pamphlets were found during a police raid at the house of a jailer in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada town, a police official said Thursday, after the Dec 16 jailbreak engineered by Maoists in which 299 prisoners escaped.
“Police recovered a letter written in English by a leader of the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-M), Narayan Sanyal, during the raid on the house of jailer B.S. Mankar who was first suspended and then arrested for his involvement in the Dantewada jail break,” Dantewada District Superintendent of Police Rahul Sharma told IANS.
Sanyal is the lone living contemporary of Charu Majumdar, the founder of the Maoist movement. He is presently lodged at Bilaspur Central Jail and is facing dozens of charges including masterminding the November 2005 Jehanabad jailbreak and carrying out an attack on former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu in October 2003 in Alipiri.
“Sanyal has mentioned various cases pending against him in the letter seized from Mankar’s house at Dantewada earlier this week. The letter has some paragraphs about the Maoist movement and Salwa Judum too,” Sharma said, adding that some Maoist pamphlets were also found in the raid.
Salwa Judum is a civil militia movement launched by tribals against the insurgents in June 2005. The state government later began giving arms and monetary support to the movement and this led to a sudden spurt in Maoist violence in the southern Bastar region, including Dantewada, 380 km south of capital Raipur.
Chhattisgarh government suspended Mankar Dec 17 along with four other Dantewada jail officials and P.D. Verma, deputy inspector general (jails), for security lapses. Police arrested Mankar and raided his house hours after his suspension.
Mankar is presently in judicial custody. Dantewada police want to take him into their custody and ask him about the jailbreak. The government has already ordered a magisterial inquiry into it.
Police claim Mankar had arranged food from a local hotel for Sanyal when he was brought to Dantewada jail from Raipur this year for three days in January in connection with a court case related to terror attacks.
Meanwhile, police have issued sketches of four conspirators Wednesday after failing to track down any of the 100 insurgents who escaped Dec 16. The government has announced a prize of Rs.25,000 for anyone who gives any information about any of the four jailbreak masterminds – Sujeet Kumar Rao, Marwi Budhra, Roopa alias Verghese and Deepak alias Maso.