Naxal's wife took NGO, cops for a ride

She was working as a teacher when arrested

  As per the NGO records, Kandula studied up to Intermediate and was estranged from family and friends due to a personal tragedy.

That was the story till she was nabbed by anti-Maoists sleuths on the borders of Andhra-Orissa on Monday. Later she was identified as none other than Padmakka, wife of top Maoist leader Ramakrishna alias Akkiraju Hargopal. The Andhra Pradesh police had announced a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh on Padmakka. The police said Padma was caught in Koraput district   while she was on her way to meet her ailing husband and son in the Narayanpatna forests. However, the Maoist leader, a member of the Central Committee and in charge of the Andhra-Orissa border committee of the Maoists, is still at large.

Thirty-two-year-old Padma was working in the children’s home for the last three years. “She always avoided being photographed on several occasions during events in the school-cum-hostel,” says the organisation head.

Case filed

Civil rights activist G Kalyan Rao, who called on Padma at the Koraput jail, said she was taken into custody by the Orissa police near Saluru on November 10 and interrogated by the AP police at Vizianagaram and later she was handed over to the Orissa police.
The Odissa police have filed a case of sedition and treason on Padmakka in a local court.
While the police claim that Padmakka alias Durga alias Nirmala was a prominent Maoist activist involved in many major operations in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, revolutionary poet and Maoist sympathiser Vara Vara Rao has denied all such allegations and said Padmakka was working in an orphanage in Hyderabad.

The Andhra Police have deployed eight units of elite commando force of Greyhounds to nab Ramakrishna who is believed to be at a safe hide out in either the Narayanpatna or Bandhugoan blocks in Orissa. His son Prithvi is also staying with him so the Maoist teams are zealously protecting him.

The Andhra Pradesh police blame their Orissa counterparts for jumping the gun and arresting Padma before she made contact with Ramakrishna’s couriers.

Ramakrishna is now guarded by a 70-member guerilla-military unit. He is said to be the mastermind in eliminating police informers (former activists and tribals) in the AOB area.