What will today bring?

NAGPUR: The eighth day of the fifth month of the Gregorian calendar is also observed worldwide as the World Red Cross and Red Crescent day to mark the international humanitarian movement to save human life and health. For city police, May 8 has its own significance. On that day, in 2007 and 2008, they faced and overcame two significant challenges.
In 2007, alleged top Maoist cadres Arun Thomas Ferreira and Murli Ashok Satya Reddy, both members of Maharashtra state committee, were trapped at Deekshabhoomi by a squad of the then zonal deputy commissioner of police Amitesh Kumar.Two more aides of Ferreira and Reddy-- Naresh Bansod and Dhanendra Bhurle-- were also held. The operation was supervised directly by then commissioner of police SPS Yadav.
It was after two years that leading Naxal cadres were held in the city. In 2005, Maharashtra state committee member Madanlal and his aide Shantanu Kamble were held near Ganeshpeth bus stop. The arrests of Ferreira and Murli dealt a severe blow to Naxalites in the state. Ferreira's absence crippled the movement among the students and youths. The Mumbai-lad had made his base at Chandrapur and was instrumental in drawing students towards Naxalism.
Ferreira was the inspiration behind the student-based front organisation which would indoctrinate the youths. The tougher among them would be directed towards armed revolution in the hinterlands while the intellectual ones would work for the front organisations and other wings like cultural and literary. Murli, who was the secretary of Balaghat-Gondia-Gadchiroli division, also had considerable influence among the cadres. His arrest had weakened the force to a large extent extent, felt Pankaj Gupta, chief of state Anti-Naxal Operation (ANO) cell.
Moreover, cops started arresting other top cadres after interrogation of the Maoist cadres. Two more senior cadres and state committee members-- Vernon Gonsalves and Shreedhar Srinivasan-- were picked up by Mumbai ATS. Youths from Chandrapur were also rounded up with huge arms and ammunitions. The successors Milind Teltumbde, secretary of the Maharashtra State committee, and Anand, who is now holding Murli's post, failed to make the same impact. The movement, after lying low for a year-and-half, picked up momentum towards end of 2008 after the local dalams were fortified with cadres from Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
On May 8, 2008, exactly after a year of the arrest of the alleged Maoists, city police were jolted by Lakhotia murder case. The sheer ferocity of attack that left Lakhotia brothers-- Sushil and Suresh-- dead had also left the cops numb. A bunch of gun-wielding youths had killed the brothers in a bid to rob cash kept in their office. Youngest brother Shailesh survived after being shot. Shailesh, who still sounds edgy, said that family wanted to forget the 'black day'. "It was our success that led to the incident. The family does not even want to publish any memoriams for the dead as we have started avoiding public glare. I was the only survivor and so was also under scanner," said Shailesh. He said that the family had tasted some success following a hard struggle and a humble beginning. Shailesh also said that the children of his slain brothers were being well taken care of. Shailesh, apart from his brothers, also lost his father in the last one year.
The investigation, led by the then deputy commissioner of police Madhukar Pandey, was carried out in utmost secrecy until seven youths were nabbed with the help from Special Task Force (STF) in Uttar Pradesh while one of their accomplices was held in city after around a fortnight. The investigation made use of mobile phone technology to trace the killers. Police, for the first time, were probing a case in which the core team of culprits were criminals from outstation. They were guided by their local contacts. Hundreds were rounded up for enquiry in different police stations. Several criminals voluntarily surrendered before the cops, after learning about the citywide crackdown, to convince the cops that they were not part of conspiracy. The detection of the crime, which was appearing impossible at one point of time, brought much-awaited relief to the city police which tasted success after an acid test.