Sunday, March 14, 2010

Tech Ramana den yields arms

Police busted a huge arms den of Maoists in a house at Paidiparru of Tanuku in West Godavari district on Saturday morning and recovered around 3,000 hand grenades, unassembled rocket launchers, 26 nine mm caliber bullets and six two-inch mortar shells.

Sleuths traced the arms dump after decoding the documents seized from the Maoist Solipeta Kondal Reddy alias Tech Ramana, who was gunned down on Friday.

Investigations also revealed that the weapons had been brought from a clandestine manufacturing unit of the Maoists located in Chennai. A Warangal police team that went to Tanuku filled up the weapons in 26 gunny bags and brought them back.

“The hand grenades are not assembled,” said a police officer. “They have to put charge and detonator to use them. Quiet probably they may be assembling them before use. The mortars can fire up to 500 metres. The weapons are being made in Chennai.”

Police learnt from the documents that Tech Ramana had rented a house in Paidiparru and a police team by the Bhupalapalli circle inspector, Mr S. Muralidhar, reached there on Saturday morning.

The shocked villagers said that Tech Ramana had pretended to be a scrap dealer and had rented out a portion of a house belonging to an autorickshaw driver for a monthly sum of Rs 750.

“It was used as an arms den and a shelter for top Maoists,” said the police officer. “They chose the area because of lower police vigil there.”

Police said that the seizure was similar to the one that followed the arrest of Tech Madhu four years ago.

Tech Madhu, who headed the CPI-Maoist technical wing, surrendered along with his wife Sudharani before the Warangal police in October 2006. His surrender followed the seizure of around 875 rocket shells, launchers and ammunition from the godowns of a transport company in Mahbubnagar and Prakasam.

This cache was meant for delivery to Maoists and had been transported from Chennai by Tech Madhu.

“In this case also Tech Ramana was getting the weapons manufactured in Chennai,” said a police officer. “All the spare parts are coming from there.”

Cops also found from the documents that Maoists are using information in the Internet to improve their grenades, rocket launchers and firearms. Tech Ramana had downloaded designs of several weapons from the Net.

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