Additional director-general of CID Raj Kanojia (top) at a news conference on Monday at Bhabani Bhavan (centre) where Telugu Deepak is being held; (above) state director-general of police Bhupinder Singh at the same place. Singh has sanctioned Rs 10,000 for the police team that caught the Maoist leader for them to buy sweets. Pictures by Amit Datta

Midnapore, March 3: Maoist leader Venkateshwar Reddy alias Telugu Deepak, who was arrested yesterday from Behala, had trained the action squad members of the CPI (Maoist) in West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura to make improvised explosive devices.

Deepak had also introduced directional mines and improvised explosive devices stuffed in steel milk cans in Bengal, West Midnapore police said.

Plainclothesmen had caught the Maoist leader from a busy bus stop at Sarsuna in Behala last night.

A police officer said Deepak had used a directional mine — a pipe containing explosives and splinters used to bomb specific targets — to attack chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s convoy in Salboni in 2008.

Unlike normal mines, which can be located with detectors, directional mines need not be planted on the road. It can be placed on soft earth beside roads. After the explosion, pellets and splinters from these mines scatter in one direction.

“The right side of the police vehicle in the chief minister’s convoy which was hit on November 2, 2008, was riddled with pellet holes. The directional mine was used for the first time to trigger the Salboni blast. We have received information that Telugu Deepak had designed the device,” the police officer said.

Police sources said Deepak had also designed milk-can IEDs. Maoists had used the milk-can explosive for the first time in February 2004 to blow up a police jeep in the Kankrajhore forest of West Midnapore, killing seven cops.

“Our investigations have revealed that Deepak had been active in West Midnapore for the past 10 years,” district superintendent of police Manoj Verma said.

The West Midnapore SP also claimed that Deepak was the mastermind behind the Shilda killings.

“Deepak was the chief of the state military commission of the Maoists and it was he who planned the Shilda massacre,” Verma said.

A police officer said Deepak had switched to ammonium nitrate from gelatin sticks for making IEDs.

“Maoists earlier used gelatin sticks smuggled from coal mines and quarries in Bengal and Jharkhand to make explosive devices. But when it became difficult to steal gelatin sticks because of increased police vigil, Deepak switched to ammonium nitrate which is used in fertilisers and easier to get. Ammonium nitrate was used in the Salboni blast,” a police officer said.

Another cop said Deepak had engineered the explosion that killed the officer-in-charge of Barikul police station in Bankura, Prabal Sengupta, in July 2004.

The police said that in the recent past, Deepak had been trying to make new cartridges by stuffing spent ones with gunpowder and pellets.

“A month ago, during a raid in the Ajnashuli forest in Lalgarh, security forces had come across a tent used by Maoists in which they found spent cartridges filled with gunpowder and splinters. This led us to believe that the Maoists were trying to make their own cartridges,” a police officer said.