In a bid to curb Maoist activities, Telangana police has arrested a professor of the Osmania University on Saturday for suspected links with the Maoists. Associate Professor of Telugu department, C Kasim had been involved in a case registered under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act among other sections in Mulugu Police station in 2015.
“That case is under investigation and we collected the material evidence also. Recently some inputs have also been received,” Siddipet police Commissioner D Joel Davis told PTI. “We seized certain documents and some electronic evidence,” the CP added.
He further said the police have the incriminating information that the OU faculty is in continuous touch with Maoists party leaders. Kasim is allegedly working as an organiser of “united front vertical” of Maoists for Telangana state. “He is the coordinator for funding and other things,” the official said adding Kasim will be produced in a local court in Gajwel on Saturday.
As revealed by the police in this case, the urban Naxal movement is dominantly spreading amongst the students and in university faculties. Confirming this, a professor K Jagan had also been arrested by the Telangana police from Osmania University in October last year. Maoism was largely confined to the interior villages and in deep forests however it has shifted its target to the cities, an invisible Naxal-intelligentsia-media-academia-NGO-activist nexus works as strategic fortification with the ultimate aim of taking over the Indian state to achieve Maoist rule.
The role of the activists, intellectuals and the students is the most crucial pedestal of ‘Urban Naxal’, subtle and persuasive working style makes it a tough task for the intelligence to unearth. The urban movement has attracted students towards the Maoist fold in various parts of the country. In the 1980s, hordes of students from Kakatiya University and Regional Engineering College (now National Institute of Technology), Warangal and Osmania University, Hyderabd, joined the then Progressive War cadres.
Security agencies believe that the front organisations have started vigorous movement in the education sector, to rope in students from several reputed colleges for their cause. People working under banners with hints of revolution, like ‘Sangharsh’ and ‘Kranti’ are under the scanner. JNU, Hyderabad Central University (HCU), TISS, Allahabad University, IIT Madras, JU are citadels of urban Naxalism.
The efforts of the renowned ‘Greyhounds’, a unit of Andhra police feared by the Naxals for its tactical efficiency, and the CRPF’s COBRA unit must also be commended for unearthing some of the most wanted Naxal- commanders and their networks. Forces must evolve their tactics as it did for home-grown terror organisations.