Sabyasachi Panda: Naxal did not resist arrest

Bhubaneswar: A revolver, several rounds of live cartridges, nearly 500 gram of gold ornaments, two computer hard disks and Rs 2 lakh cash were seized from top Maoist leader, Sabyasachi Panda alias Sunil.

His list of crimes includes a jailbreak in R. Udayagiri and attack on R. Udayagiri police station in 2006, attack on the Nayagarh police training centre and armory, the brutal murder of Hindu seer Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati in 2008 and abduction of two Italian tourists in 2012.

“The arrest of Sabyasachi Panda is a great success for Odisha police. It was an intelligence based operation directly operated by Amitabha Thakur, DIG at Berhampur, and local SP Anirudh Singh,” DGP Marik said.

Sources said there was no resistance by the rebel leader. Sabyasachi, who had joined the Naxal movement in 1995, carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh on his head. Sabyasachi, who formed the Odisha Maobadi Party in 2012 following his break up with the CPI-Maoist, was currently the head of a new outfit called the CPI-Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (CPI-MLM).

Former DGP Prakash Mishra had started the campaign to arrest the rebel leader. There had been several raids on his jungle camps. In 2012 November, five close aides of Sabyasachi were killed  in Bhaliaguda in Gajapati district.

However, even after being isolated and weakened substantially, Sabyasachi had all along refused to respond to several appeals and calls by Gandhians and others to surrender.