4 pseudo Maoists arrested in Warangal

Warangal: The Kakatiya University Campus (KUC) police on Monday busted a four-member 'pseudo Maoist gang', which involved in several extortion cases, and seized a toy pistol, Rs 1.65 lakh in cash, 16 cell phones, a laptop and a pen knife from them.

Commissioner of Police V Ravinder said that they have arrested Pusala Srimannarayana and Narmetta Nagaraju of Thorrur in Mahabubabad district, Potharaju of Kamareddy village under Parkal mandal in Warangal Rural district and Dharavath Srinivas of Cheruvumundu Thanda under Kodakandla mandal in Jangaon district involved in extortions by posing as Maoists.

Srimannarayana, the kingpin of the gang, is a postgraduate in Science and worked as a contract lecturer in Raiparthy Government College in the past. He also ran an educational and job consultancy. After incurring losses in the consultancy firm, he chose to extort money from politicos, contractors, businessmen and realtors by posing as Maoist.

He discussed it with his friends Nagaraju, Potharaju and Srinivas. The gang so far extorted Rs 1 lakh from a chit fund owner, Rs 50,000 from a realtor in Thorrur, Rs 30,000 from a realtor belonging to Tirumalagri of Suryapet district and Rs 10,000 from a kirana shop owner in Jangaon. This apart, the gang also threatened two businessmen, the police said. The gang used to call the targeted persons in the name of Maoist leaders Damodar and Bhaskar.

The Task Force police, which got a tip off, arrested the gang at KUC guest house. The Commissioner commended Task Force ACP Chakravarthy, Hanamkonda ACP Sridhar, Task Force Inspector Devender Reddy, KUC Inspector David Raju, cybercrime inspector Vishweshwar and other officials for nabbing the gang.