Kabita Rabha after her arrest on Thursday. Picture by UB Photos

Guwahati, May 16: A 31-year-old woman Maoist cadre, Kabita Rabha, was arrested this morning from a rented house at Udalbakra here, from where she was allegedly running a printing press of the red rebels.

According to police, Kabita, alias Debi Mukherjee, had married veteran CPI (Maoist) leader from Bengal, Anukul Chandra Naskar, 76, in 2004 and had joined the rebels around that time. She was running a printing press from the house at Udalbakra and published Maoist literature, whi-ch is distributed across the st-ate to strengthen the political wing of the rebels in Assam.

Inspector-general of police (central western range) L.R. Bishnoi said the arrest was made based on call details of Naskar, who was arrested in Silchar on May 7. He was staying in a rented house in Silchar under the alias Kaushik Mukherjee.

“Maoists in Assam are working on strengthening its political wing before going for armed attacks. Preliminary investigation has revealed that Kabita was printing Maoist documents and literature and was also looking after its accounts. We hope to get further details from two computers, one hard disk, three pen drives and 15 CDs seized from her,” Bishnoi said.

A joint team of city police and 175 battalion of CRPF carried out the operation on the basis of inputs by the Gajraj intelligence unit of the army.

Bishnoi said Kabita, originally from Chaygaon in Kamrup district, had met Naskar in 2002 and had married him two years later. He said Naskar was looking after activities of their political wing in at least six Assam districts and had recruited around 150 members and supporters in the past two years.

Based on information provided by Assam police, their counterparts at Ranchi in Jharkhand today arrested Naskar’s elder brother Prasanna, who is also a Maoist member.

According to the police, there are around 180 CPI (Maoist) members and link persons in Assam and they have already established links with Ulfa, PLA (Manipur) and other rebel groups of the Northeast. “They are collecting money in small amounts from Upper Assam and Goalpara and Kamrup districts and so far we have not come across any incident where a big business house was targeted,” Bishnoi said.

He said an Assam police team was leaving for Calcutta tomorrow to get details from a house at Tollygunge where Naskar stayed as a tenant and added that Bengal police were already keeping an eye on the house.