The Maoists received a massive blow when their top leader Bikram was arrested by the joint security forces along with huge arms and ammunitions in a successful operation in Purulia. Bikram was CPI(Maoist)’s West Bengal state committee member and commander of the infamous Ayodhya squad. The 33-year-old Bikram, whose original name is Arnab Dam, had fake identities of Surya, Rakesh and Babu. “At around 11.30 pm on Monday, he was caught from the Biramdih railway station at Balarampur in Purulia district. Bikram was CPI(Maoist) state committee member of West Bengal and also the secretary of the Bengal-Jharkhand-Orissa regional committee,” said deputy inspector general of police (Midnapore Range) L.N. Meena on Tuesday.
According to sources, Bikram had gone to meet a man at the station. Following a tip-off, a joint forces team led by superintendent of police (Purulia) C. Sudhakar raided the place and caught him. An AK-47 rifle, 30 rounds of cartridges, two magazines, a camera, a bunch of Maoist press notes and literature were recovered later from a hide out which he revealed.
Even though Maoist top gun Kishenji was killed in an encounter in 2011 and several senior rebel commanders like Jagori Baskey and Suchitra Mahato had surrendered before the Mamata Banerjee government, Bikram had managed to elude the police and intelligence officials for a long time. A fierce guerrilla leader as well as an expert on Maoist ideology, he was entrusted by the Maoist leadership to indoctrinate the young recruits and impart them arms training in Purulia. He always enjoyed Kishenji’s patronage for his exceptional leadership qualities, intelligence officials revealed. “Bikram was wanted in more than 80 cases of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) alone in Purulia. There are also LWE cases against him in Jharkhand,” Mr Meena elaborated.
The Purulia cases include the abduction and murder of undercover intelligence branch (IB) inspector of West Bengal police Partha Biswas who reportedly went to “shadow” Bikram with his school teacher-cum-friend Soumyajit Basu at the Ayodhya Hills in the district in October 2010.
Bikram was also involved in the killings of CPI(M) leader Ajit Singh and his son Bapi in October and Trinamul Congress leader Jitu Singh Sardar in November 2011.
Bikram was produced at the Purulia court which remanded him in seven days’ police custody. Along with the district police, the IB and CID officials are now interrogating him to know the whereabouts of other rebels Ranjit Pal and Pintu Mahato.