Dhanbad/Bokaro, May 14: Amid a steady trickle of senior and middle-level Maoist leaders into Jharkhand to enforce tomorrow’s bandh in protest against the sensational arrest of their mentor Pramod Mishra, the chief judicial magistrate of Dhanbad today agreed to a five-day police remand of the top rebel leader. But with riders.

In response to Mishra’s plea in court yesterday, the chief judicial magistrate noted in his remand order that the Maoists leader should not be tortured — mentally or physically — and should be shown to doctors every 48 hours, besides allowing his counsel and close relatives to meet him.

After completing court formalities, senior police officers, including deputy inspector-general Anurag Gupta, inspector Vijay Kumar, interrogated Mishra before he was taken to Bokaro where he has been kept near a paramilitary camp. Tomorrow, Mishra may be brought to Ranchi where he would face many more rounds of interrogations by senior officers of the intelligence bureau.

State police spokesman R.K. Mallick chose to describe the Maoists’ bandh call as a “desperate move of frustrated Naxalites”. But sources revealed the shutdown — likely to be complete in the state — was a rebel ploy to give themselves a window of opportunity to bring into the state a large number of cadres from Warangal, Chhattisgarh, Bhubaneswar, Calcutta and even Birganj in Nepal.

In fact, senior policemen in plainclothes were stationed at the railway stations of Dhanbad and Bokaro today in a bid to apprehend the visiting Maoists — the police had information that as many as 24 were coming — who were said to be travelling in the morning’s Shatabdi Express from Howrah and the Rajdhani Express from New Delhi. No arrests were, however, made.

The Maoists, according to sources, are holding a meeting at the Jhumra hills tonight to chalk out strategy for tomorrow’s strike call. Already, the Maoists are said to have distributed handbills in the coal belt to declare “the death penalty” on all police officials involved in the operation to arrest Mishra.

Among those named were Gupta, Kumar, sub-inspector Satish Kumar and four others for having staged a kidnap drama of his son to lure Mishra out of hiding. Gupta, however, dismissed the threat as an occupational hazard.

Insisting that he had never feared Maoists, he said: “Mishra is a hardcore Maoist and is involved in several massacres of innocents. The documents we have seized prove beyond doubt that many with collar jobs are helping the outfit.”