Bhubaneswar, April 27: Apparently unnerved by intensified police operation and ditched by her own comrades-in-arms, a top Maoist leader today laid down arms in Koraput district.

Susheela alias Pushpa, wife of jailed Maoist Chhenda Bhushan alias Ghasi and commander of the CPI(Maoist), Koraput division militia group, surrendered before DIG (southern range), Soumendra Priyadarshi.

Describing her surrender as a major success for the police, Priyadarshi said Pushpa, who hailed from Wankawadi village in Vishakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh, was involved in several incidents of violence in Orissa and her home state. While she was involved in an attack in R. Udaygiri town in Gajapati, she was part of the rebel group that looted the CISF armoury following a raid on bauxite mines in Damanjodi area of Koraput in 2009.

Pushpa, who joined the Maoist movement in 2005 and headed its publicity and cultural wing in Koraput district before being assigned tougher operational tasks, was also involved in a major encounter with the police at Kalimela in Malkangiri district.

Police said Pushpa had revealed that the Maoist organisation had become apathetic towards her since the arrest of her husband on April 25 and was not even paying any attention to her health problems.

Ghasi was a senior member of the Andhra Orissa Border Special Zone Committee (AOBSZC) of the CPI(Maoist) and wanted in more than 200 criminal cases, including 65 murders in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. He carried a reward of Rs10 lakh on his head in Andhra Pradesh.

Lodged in Koraput jail, Ghasi was a prize catch for the police as he had a hand in almost all violent activities of the Maoists in Malkangiri and Koraput. He was the second top ranking Maoist leader to have been arrested in the state after Shatrughna Biswal, a leading force of the rebels in western Orissa.

The police, in fact, have had several other successes in their operation against the Maoists which resumed last month after a lull for about a month in the wake of the Malkangiri hostage crisis.

While killing of a woman Maoist on Sunday was their first operation against the rebels in Malkangiri since the end of the hostage crisis, on April 11 they had busted a Maoist camp in the mineral rich Keonjhar district and seized a huge cache of explosives, including 72 gelatine sticks, several detonators and some hand grenades.

Senior police officers, however, refuted allegations that anti-Maoist operations in the state had been resumed in violation of the February agreement between the government and the representatives of the Maoists. They asserted that the agreement had been breached by the rebels who were indulging in unlawful activities.