Bhubaneswar/Berhampur, April 4: The name of Subhashree Panda alias Mili, wife of Odisha Maobadi Party (OMP) leader Sabyasachi Panda, has surfaced yet again following the arrest of two senior Maoist leaders from a forest in Ganjam district.

Police have accused Mili of supplying arms to Sabyasachi.

The two Maoists — K. Anita alias Kalari Majhi and Bikram Mallick — were arrested yesterday night from Talapatnam village with firearms, ammunition, explosives, detonators, fuse wires, a motorbike and Rs 3.99 lakh in cash.

Ganjam police chief Ashish Kumar Singh said the rebels were caught with the consignment Mili had sent for her husband, who has been roaming in the forests of Ganjam and Kandhamal evading arrest. “Sabyasachi had sent them to fetch this material, which had been sent by his wife Mili,” Singh said.

On whether the police would initiate action against Mili, the top cop said law would take its own course, but his priority at the moment was to trace three others, who had managed to escape but were involved in the case.

The cache of arms was apparently being brought from Nayagarh, the home district of Sabyasachi.

The police said Anita was the commander of the OMP’s women wing while Mallick was also high up in the organisation’s hierarchy. As many as nine cases are pending against them in Sorada and Bargarh police stations.

The focus, however, now seems to have shifted to Mili, who was first arrested in a case related to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in January 2010, but acquitted by Orissa High Court in September 2011. She was re-arrested by Rayagada police on October 21, 2011, for her alleged involvement in an encounter between security forces and the Maoists in Kutinguda forests in the Gudari police limits and lodged in Gunpur jail.

Mili, who is in her late thirties, was released from jail on April 10, 2012, around the same time when negotiations between her husband and the state government were on for the release of two Italian nationals kidnapped by his group of Maoists.

Mili came across as an ambitious woman who had even offered to mediate in the Italian hostage crisis though the government did not evince any interest in this.

Mili could not be contacted for her comments despite repeated attempts.