COIMBATORE:Contradicting recent reports that a video was unearthed from the five arrested Maoists allegedly giving weapons training to over 50 persons in an undisclosed location in Tamil Nadu, sources privy to the investigation being carried out by the Q-Branch police, said that such rumours were ‘false’ and were ‘fabrications’ of lower level officials in the department.
A tranche of documents were discovered in a laptop belonging to Maoist couple, Roopesh and Shyna at their house in Tirupur. However, the ‘documents’ were restricted to only pamphlets, communist literature, and propaganda material, highly placed sources told Express. “The propaganda material discussed, in a generalized sense, the problems faced by tribal communities mostly based in Kerala and Karnataka.”
In the laptop, there were also suggestions on how to strengthen the Maoist movement in Tamil Nadu. Most of the documents were in Malayalam, and have been handed over to the Kerala police. Police confirmed that there was no video which had been unearthed from the hard drives seized from any of the suspects.
S Balamurugan, the lawyer representing the five Maoists, said that the police themselves have not produced any records of such a video, showing persons being given arms training, to the court. He said that the only materials seized from his clients were some ‘communist literature.’ The mere possession or affiliation with an ideology cannot be construed to be illegal, he said.
The reports of such a video, without any material evidence of its existence, were ‘unfair’ and was an attempt to ‘defame and character assassinate’ the five Maoists, he added.
Meanwhile, Q-Branch police, who Express attempted to contact, said that they were unaware of the existence of such a video themselves. They were also clueless about the origins of such a rumour.