Thiruvananthapuram, May 5: The teenage daughter of a Maoist couple showcased as trophy catches by the Kerala government today said she was proud of her parents and the cases against them were fabricated.

"I am proud of my parents.... They did not rob anyone. All they did was believe in an ideology," the girl told a television channel after the government tom-tommed the arrest of Maoist leader Rupesh and his wife P.A. Shyna as a big breakthrough.

Tamil Nadu police had picked them up last night following inputs from their counterparts in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala, according to official reports. A Coimbatore court today sent them to judicial custody.

Rupesh, a CPI (Maoist) central committee member said to have been heading the banned outfit's Western Ghats Special Zonal Committee, was reportedly the brain behind attacks targeting MNCs and government establishments in Kerala in the last few months.

Human rights activists say the crimes were petty offences that workers of any political party would have indulged in.

But in July 2010, the brake pipe of a passenger train was found severed shortly before it was to leave a station in Malappuram district. The timely detection helped avoid a tragedy and the plot was linked to Maoist attempts to avenge the encounter death of a leader.

The couple - both law graduates - had first hit the headlines following the arrest of Andhra Maoist leader Malla Raja Reddy from Angamali near Kochi in 2007. The police suspected that Reddy was sheltered by the couple and raided their premises but the two had already gone underground by then.

Shyna, who was an upper division clerk in Kerala High Court, later quit her job and wrote a letter to then chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan "thanking" him for helping her transform into a Maoist from a mere ideological sympathiser.

Since then, the police had been looking for Rupesh, who, at regular intervals, was "sighted" in the tribal areas of north Kerala's Wayanad district that borders Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

The couple have two daughters, whom they had left in the custody of Shyna's mother, Nafeesa, before going underground.

According to official reports, the couple, along with three others, were picked up from a bakery some 20km from Coimbatore last evening while they were having tea. Acting on specific intelligence, the team from the "Q" branch of the Tamil Nadu CID swooped down on the bakery and arrested the Maoists, who reportedly surrendered without any resistance.

However, while being presented in court today, Rupesh shouted to waiting journalists that they had been abducted from Andhra Pradesh. The others arrested with the couple have been identified as Anoop, also a Malayali, and Veeramani and Kannan, both from Tamil Nadu.

Kerala home minister Ramesh Chennithala said Rupesh's arrest was a big breakthrough, adding the state's anti-Maoist squad, the Thunderbolts, had been on his trail for several months. All five were remanded in judicial custody till June 3.

Sources in the state police said Left-wing extremists were behind a series of attacks on government and private properties in the recent past. #In November 2014, a group of masked men ransacked the Kochi office of a chemical company accused by local residents of polluting a river with harmful discharge. In December, suspected Maoists ransacked a forest department office in Palakkad district in the night, burning files and furniture and setting vehicles on fire.