Rebel leader Satish Chandra Mishra’s wife Shila Devi and her children make bidis at their Jamui home. Picture by Amit Kumar

For 10 years, Putul Devi (41) knew her husband Samir (47) was a railway employee. In May 2010, her world collapsed when Samir was arrested and the father of her two children turned to be a dreaded “zonal commander” of the Maoists in the eastern Bihar districts.

Putul Devi, a resident of Ghutia on the Jamui-Jharkhand border, initially refused to believe the police allegation but with time she learnt to live with the bitter reality.

“This is what I got in return for staying with a man for over a decade. He (Samir) did not even bother to tell me who he was. I don’t know what I will do with my two children. I am worried for their future,” Putul said.

Like Putul, many married women across the Red corridor of Bihar are unaware that their husbands are gun-toting cadres of the Naxalite organisation CPI(Maoist).

Residents of Bellari hamlet under Shambhuganj police station in Banka are yet to recover from the shock that the village’s sole PhD degree holder, Ram Das, was a senior Maoist leader who went by the nom de plume Nandu in police records. On May 21, the police nabbed Ram Das near the Ranchi railway station. The Ranchi police said Ram alias Nandu was a close associate of rebel leader Kishen, who was killed in an encounter in Bengal last year. Ram was also a member of the special committee of the CPI(Maoist)’s Bihar-Jharkhand and north Chhattisgarh units.

The revelation came as a rude shock for Ram’s younger brother Gajomoti. “How is it possible that my elder brother became a Maoist leader?” a sobbing Gajomoti told Wakil Manjhi, the station house officer of Shambhuganj police station after his brother was arrested. Ram Das, who had done his masters from Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University with a first-class and completed his PhD in philosophy, had left the village after one Gena Lal Jha was murdered, sources said.

Similarly, the residents of Thamman, an inaccessible hamlet under Sono police station in Jamui, are yet to come to terms with the fact that Satish Chandra Mishra, popularly known as Doctor saheb in the village, was a Maoist “zonal commander”. The information came to light after Mishra was arrested a year ago.

Maoist leaders prefer to hide their true identity from their wives and children. Sources said the rebels used to stay away from their villages for long by claiming that they were busy with their jobs at distant places.

“As far as my knowledge goes, my niece’s husband Sahodeo Murmu worked in Ranchi. I later came to know that he was Birbal (a zonal commander),” Eatwari Tudu, a railway employee at Malda, told the Pakur (Jharkhand) police.

Birbal, the zonal commander of the eastern Bihar and western Jharkhand areas of the CPI(Maoist), along with Tudu, a native of Rampur under Haveli Kharagpur police station in Munger, was arrested from Pakur railway station on June 8.

A.K. Ambedkar, the inspector-general of police, Bhagalpur range, said hiding one’s identity to serve the rebels was common in this region. “That is why after the arrest of any rebel, the police do not harass his/her family members, keeping in mind that the helpless kin might not be aware of the reality,” he said.

“I travelled to the villages to see whether the rebels, who earn well, had contributed anything for the development of their community or not. But I was surprised to find the pitiable condition of their family members and the entire village,” the IG added.