Maoist Sri Vidya, wife of top gun Ashanna, nabbed in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) Dandakaranya state committee member Sri Vidya, who was camping in the city on the sly, was caught by Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB) at Hafeezpet on Thursday. She was working in Maad, a remote area in Abhujmarh in Chhattisgarh.

Sri Vidya, currently in her early 50s, had joined People’s War in 1992 and later married senior Maoist leader Takkalapally Vasudeva Rao alias Ashanna. She carries a bounty of Rs 20 lakh on her head.

On learning that she was taking shelter in Hafeezpet, sleuths of SIB, an anti-naxalite intelligence wing of the Telangana police, with the support of the Cyberabad police, took her into custody.

A police source said that she took a house on rent in Hafeezpet and allegedly was staying there to do clandestine work of the Maoists. Officials seized literature and a laptop from the house. “The house was taken on rent by using the ID proof of her known persons,” the source told TOI.

After her family members and human rights activists came to know that she was taken into custody by plain-clothes personnel, they suspected that they could be police, but were not sure which agency was involved.

A few hours later, they made an attempt to file a habeas corpus petition by moving a house motion petition before the high court, but it was not entertained. After discovering that she was arrested by the Cyberabad police, they demanded police to produce her before a magistrate.

In 2019, her brother N Ravi Sharma and his wife B Anuradha, who were former state committee members of CPI Maoist’s Bihar-Jharkhand unit, were booked by the LB Nagar police. In the same case, Sri Vidya was also named an absconding accused. Multiple cases were pending against her in several states.

A case was registered against her at the Miyapur police station late on Thursday night.