RAIPUR:Police on Monday arrested seven members of a civil society group from Telangana — two lawyers, a student, a journalist, a couple of tribal rights activists and a researcher — in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district for being engaged in “suspicious activities”.
The police said the team was arrested based on intelligence inputs saying the group members were engaged in “suspicious activities”. “We have recovered incriminating Maoist literature and `1 lakh from them. All the cash in their possession were in the demonetised `500 and `1,000 notes,” Sukma Additional SP Jitendra Shukla told Express. And Bastar IG S R P Kalluri told mediapersons that those arrested were “coercing the local villagers to get Maoists’ old notes exchanged for new ones”.
The cops, however, added that it was their Telangana counterparts who first detained the team. “We provided the information about them to the Telangana police and sought their cooperation. All seven were detained by the Telangana police and later we arrested them under Section 8 of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act”, Shukla added.
Those arrested are Chikud Prabhakar, Bala Ravinder (both advocates), Mohamed Nazeer (student), Rajendra Prasad, R Lakshmanaiah (tribal rights activists), journalist B Durgaprasad and researcher D Prabhakar. All were produced before the Sukma district court, where their bail applications were rejected and they were sent to jail.More: