Sunday, October 18, 2009

Delhi: Scanner on pro - Maoist Academics


Posted by indianvanguard on October 18, 2009

ANANYA SENGUPTA

New Delhi, Oct. 17: The government is drawing up a list of academics from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Jawaharlal Nehru University who it believes are Maoist sympathisers.

The CBI had put these senior doctors and professors under its scanner soon after the arrest of alleged CPI (Maoist) politburo member Khobad Ghandy last month. Agency sources say many students from across Delhi too are using their rented accommodation to shelter Maoists.

CBI sleuths claim these doctors and university teachers had helped Ghandy set up base in Delhi and recruit students from the capital.

They add that the agency has tracked two meetings in Delhi organised by the city’s Maoist sympathisers to discuss Ghandy’s arrest.

The sources claim the CBI has documents to show that at least three AIIMS doctors, and many more Delhi academics and students, had visited Russia, China and Kazakhstan for ideological discussions. It’s not clear, however, if arrests will follow.

When Delhi police applied in a city court on October 8 for an extension of Ghandy’s remand, they had said they were looking for three alleged Ghandy associates — two businessmen and a PhD student, Arvind Joshi.

The police application said Joshi, 27, who is from Haldwani in Uttarakhand, was believed to have hidden Ghandy at his rented quarters in the Badarpur area of south Delhi.

The police found nothing in Joshi’s rooms but claimed the student had removed a set of Maoist literature, documents, CDs, a laptop and the hard disk of another laptop as well as Rs 5 lakh from his quarters.

Officers said these claims were based on information that Ghandy allegedly provided during interrogation.

The police say they are on Joshi’s trail and would arrest him. The claims about Delhi-based sympathisers providing logistical support to the rebels come days after Union home minister P. Chidambaram asked civil society to stop “romanticising Naxals” and start judging them in the context of the “mountain of (Maoist) violence”.

On Thursday, an agricultural scientist who had briefly studied for a doctorate at Delhi’s Pusa Institute years ago was arrested for allegedly heading Maoist operations in Bihar and Jharkhand. His wife too was arrested. TT

No comments: