THRISSUR:Right from his student days, Maoist leader Roopesh had shown an inclination to leftist ideology which took a radical turn later on, his relatives have said. “His poor financial background compounded by voracious reading made him see things in a different light. While his friends in Valappad, joined the ranks of SFI, DYFI and later CPM, Roopesh chose Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), Red Flag and later, CPI (Maoist). “His keen interest in exploring the issue of exploitation even as a teenager might have led him to follow the Maoist path,” his elder brother T R Rajesh, a Gulf returnee residing in Irinjalakuda told ‘Express’. “The family was not interested in him treading an extremist line and kept a distance,” he said. Roopesh married Shyna in 1991. Though Shyna was from a well-off family, she was fascinated by the extreme leftist ideology, their batch mate at Nattika SN College said.