Jhargram, June 24: Maoists have confiscated the cellphones of dozens of people living near the Jnaneswari Express sabotage site, alarmed by the seven arrests made in the case, villagers and police said.

They said the rebels suspected that the tip-offs for the arrests had come from the villagers, a claim virtually admitted by a leader of the Maoist-backed People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities who spoke to The Telegraph.

A tour of six villages — Lalgeria, Rasua, Guimara, Barobari, Indraboni and Akhrasol, all within 6-8km of train disaster site Rajabandh — suggested that local People’s Committee leaders had seized at least 75 cellphones between Saturday and Tuesday.

“I used to talk to my boyfriend in the evenings on my mobile,” said a young woman in Lalgeria who studies in second year at Vivekananda Centenary College, Manikpara, 8km from Jhargram town.

“A People’s Committee leader asked me to hand over my phone while I was returning from college on Saturday. He told me that if I needed to use the phone, I should go to his house and use it in front of him. I never went back for the phone.”

A 25-year-old cattle trader from Barobari, whose mobile was seized on Sunday, said he was instructed to tell all the villagers to surrender their mobiles. “The People’s Committee leader said, ‘Tell the villagers that if we find that anyone has hidden their mobile from us, they will be shot’,” the young man said.

A People’s Committee leader, however, told this newspaper the phones were being seized only from those suspected of having links with the police. “The phones are lying with our people in these villages; the owners can come to them and use their phones.”

West Midnapore superintendent of police Manoj Verma confirmed the villagers’ allegation. “We have even got the names of some People’s Committee members who have snatched mobiles. We will arrest them,” Verma said.

An officer said the police’s information-gathering network in the villages had improved with people increasingly becoming “disillusioned” with the Maoists and the People’s Committee. “The People’s Committee activists now fear that the villagers would inform us about those involved in the train sabotage,” he said.

The cattle trader from Barobari endorsed the claim: “It was we who would earlier inform the People’s Committee about police movements through our mobiles. Now they have begun suspecting us. They think we might inform the police about those who took part in the train sabotage.”

There has been some speculation, however, that the Maoists themselves had provided the leads for the latest arrests in the case, those of Bapi Mahato and Bimal Mahato, in an attempt to distance themselves from the carnage.