Alik Chakraborty, the Naxal leader in the Bhangar liberated zone, was arrested from Bhubaneswar in Odisha today.
Acting on the tip-off from STF Kolkata, a special operation group team, from South 24 Parganas police, today rushed to Bhubaneswar and arrested Chakraborty from Kalinga Hospital in Bhubaneswar.
Chakraborty, who is suffering from Crohn's disease, an intestinal disease which secretes blood from gastrointestinal tube, was hidding in Bhangar which was liberated by around 5000 villagers protesting against a power grid project of Narendra Modi government.
The 14 acres land for that project was forcibly acquired by Mamata Banerjee government in 2013.
A violent movement, led by CPI(ML) Red Star leader Chakraborty, liberated 12 villages of Bhangar.
West Bengal and Kolkata police were applying different tricks to arrest Chakraborty. Police believe that the arrest would be a major blow to protesters and it would be now easy for police to break the movement.
CPI Red Star General Secretary K.N. Ramchandran said this evening, "We demand immediate release of Alik. Police are cowards."
Chakraborty was sick earlier also and was transported out of the state, which he revealed in an exclusive interview with THE WEEK, last month from his hide out in Bhangar.
"I was hospitalised couple of months in the past. But Bengal police failed to arrest me," he then said.
While Banerjee's government called the movement as guided by the Maoists, Chakraborty, in his interview with THE WEEK, neither accepted nor denied such an allegation.
Sources said Chakraborty would be slapped with sedition charges like UAPA Act.