State naxals have a new leader

Gowda succeeds B G Krishnamurthy who stepped down from the leadership due to illness, sources said. Krishnamurthy, who was in charge since 2006, and his wife and fellow naxal, Hosagadde Prabha, suffered from serious illnesses and required to travel often for treatment, leaving Gowda in temporary charge.

Though the couple have recovered their health, the Maoist central committee is learnt to have asked Vikram Gowda to continue and entrusted Krishnamurthy and Prabha with ‘other responsibilities’.

Krishnamurthy had succeeded Nelagudi Padmanabha, after the latter suffered a serious injury in an encounter. Padmanabha had taken over the leadership of the naxals in Karnataka after the most celebrated of the State naxal activists, Saketh Rajan, who headed the movement in the State since 2001, was gunned down at Menasinahadya in 2005. The southern naxal movement has Kuppuswamy as leader after Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azaad was killed in an encounter on the Andhra Pradesh border.

Meeting

Sources also said that naxals in the State held a secret meeting on July 17 at Matholi in Kudremukh National Park area. They resolved to instil confidence among the forest dwellers facing the threat of eviction, it is learnt. Besides, they discussed plans to strengthen the movement in the State.

On a direction of the central committee, a squad of armed personnel - five naxals from Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh have been deputed to fortify the movement in the Western Ghats, sources said.

The naxal movement is active in Chikmagalur, Udupi and Dakshina Kannada. Naxals visited some villages in the Malnad region and forced two landlords to part with Rs 25,000 each, sources said. The South Western Regional Bureau of the Maoists is said to have planned to extend the movement to Hassan, Madikeri and Chamarajanagar.

Nearly 1,000 personnel of the Anti-Naxal Force combed the Western Ghats areas 15 days ago.