PM assassination plot: Maoist ideologue refutes allegations

Maoist ideologue Vara Vara Rao refuted allegations that he had arranged funds for the left-wing extremists to stage attacks in the country.

His name cropped up in one of the three letters from the house of human rights activist Rona Jacob Wilson in Delhi about a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi using a suicide bomber similar to the way former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed.

Rao’s name was mentioned in those letters as a person who could arrange for funds for executing such assassination plots. Rao, a Maoist sympathiser, played an active role in arranging for talks between the then Y S Rajasekhar Reddy government and the Maoists in 2008.

In one of the letters furnished by the Pune Police before a local court revealed that Rao has already provided funds for one such recent operation of the Maoists.

Rao said the BJP government, which is badly in need of salvaging the declining image of Modi, had planted those letters.

“The letters produced in a Pune court are concocted. If it is a suicide bomber then there will be no plan and plot,” Rao told reporters. He further said that the people arrested in Pune are strongly opposed to violence.

“One of them works for Adivasis, another works for women's rights and state atrocities on women and another is a noted lawyer fighting for the protection of human rights through courts," Rao said.

Recalling the treatment meted out to N Saibaba by the Maharashtra Police by linking him to the Maoists, Rao said how a letter with “R” on it be taken into consideration. He said that so far the Pune Police have not contacted him.

Rao felt the Pune Police were desperate to link the Koregaon-Bhima Dalit movement to Maoists to snub all democratic forces by branding them as Maoists.

“Going by the recent statement of BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, that the BJP will free India from the Congress and the Maoists, a plot by the government to silence the democratic voices by calling them Maoists is clear,” Rao said.