Mukherjee breaks windowpanes of the car showroom in 2006

Calcutta, Sept. 12: Police have arrested Maoists’ Calcutta secretary, who studied international relations at Jadavpur University and picked up French and Russian but hit the spotlight by vandalising a car showroom.

Avishek Mukherjee, 31, was among three Maoist leaders picked up from Tallah in north Calcutta last night. The others have been identified as Subhas Roy and Sunil Mondal.

Special Task Force (STF) sleuths reportedly picked them up from the Tarashankar Sarani-Nityagopal Chatterjee Lane intersection when they were on their way to attend a meeting. Two pistols and 10 cartridges were seized from them, the police said.

Mukherjee, who had damaged a Calcutta showroom selling Tata Motors cars during the Singur movement, was tipped to be included in the CPI (Maoist) central committee soon, sources said.

Roy, in his late 40s, hails from Kalyani in Nadia and is a member of the CPI (Maoist) second central committee — a stand-by panel that steps in if members of the original one are arrested or killed.

Mondal, from Ghola in North 24-Parganas, is a member of the Calcutta district committee, which monitors the outfit’s activities in the city and its adjoining districts — the two Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly.

An STF officer said: “Mukherjee and a group of Jadavpur University students who were allegedly members of the Naxalite outfit Revolutionary Youth League (RYL) had attacked a car showroom in December 2006. Mukherjee was arrested a few days later. He got bail. We had been looking for him since he jumped bail several times.

“We came to know that he had taken part in the Maoists’ Lalgarh movement in 2009 and similar such activities in Jungle Mahal. We also learnt that he was close to (slain Maoist guerrilla leader) Kishan and some other rebel leaders in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.”

The attack on the car showroom had come 45 minutes before Mamata Banerjee began her 26-day fast in Calcutta against forcible land acquisition for the Tata Nano plant in Singur.

The officer said Mukherjee, a close aide of Matangini Mahila Samiti founder Deblina Chakrabarty, gave the STF the slip on several occasions. The samiti, set up in Nandigram, is suspected to be backed by Maoists.

Police sources said Mukherjee, who hails from Chandernagore in Hooghly, got involved with the CPI (Maoist) when he was studying in Jadavpur University.

“He travelled to Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, which are Maoist strongholds. He knows a number of foreign languages, including French and Russian. He is fluent in Odiya, Santhali and Tamil too,” another STF officer said.

STF officers said Mukherjee had told them that he had replaced Sabyasachi Goswami as the Calcutta district committee secretary of the CPI (Maoist).

“After taking charge of the city committee in 2008, Mukherjee started motivating labourers in the unorganised sectors to support the CPI (Maoist). He used to frequently visit shanties in north Calcutta and labour quarters of closed jute mills. He also provided logistic support to senior leaders of the outfit during their visits to Calcutta,” an STF source said.

Mukherjee has been charged with waging war against the state and provisions under the arms act. He was produced in Sealdah court, which remanded him in seven days’ police custody.

Mukherjee’s father Ashesh, 70, a private tutor who lives in a rented house in Chandernagore, said he had last seen his son in January 2010. “He never told us his whereabouts. He never called us over phone. The police had come to our house several times looking for him. I came to know about his arrest from TV,” Ashesh said.