HYDERABAD: Hyderabad police on Friday prevented a press in the city from printing the biography of top Maoist leader Akkiraju Haragopal, alias Ramakrishna or RK, who had died recently. They seized hundreds of books from Navya Printing Press at Amberpet and detained Ramakrishna Reddy, its owner and husband of V Sandhya, the national convenor of Progressive Organisation of Women. The police seized printed material, computers, hard disks and other electronic material from the press.
K Muralidhar, Additional DCP of East Zone, told the media that an analysis of the material revealed details pertaining to the Maoist party and the Amarula Bandhu Mitrula Sangham, its associate. “We suspect Ramakrishna is cooperating with the Maoists and working for them. The seized material is being sent for forensic analysis. Further investigation is underway.”
Based on a tip-off, teams from Amberpet police station and the city police raided the press on Friday night. They found that RK’s wife Sirisha had approached Ramakrishna to print her husband’s biography. Defending Ramakrishna, Sandhya said: “Sirisha and a few others approached us and requested us to print a book on RK. They came to us with a pen drive, which had all the material to be printed. Since RK is no more and because his wife had asked us, we agreed. In fact, I was the one who suggested that my husband take up the printing. He has no connection to this whatsoever.”
She also said that the police had snatched the mobile phones of all the press workers. RK, who was a central committee member of the party, died of chronic illness in October, in a Chhattisgarh forest. His biography is titled ‘Sayudha Shanti Swapnam’.