Surrendered Naxal commander says urban colleges are new recruiting ground

Vikas Ramaswamy Mekala, alias Anil Nagpure, who lived in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Kolhapur and Mumbai while studying alongside fellow students, has made a startling confession about pushing students and young people into the armed Naxal movement. He confessed on camera to what he did while living in these cities. After his parents surrendered, he suddenly had to leave Mumbai, following which he first went to Chandrapur and then to Nagpur.

He also explained how Vikas Ramaswamy became Anil Nagpure in Nagpur. While in Mumbai, he had gone by the names Vikas and Navjyot at different times. But when he had to suddenly leave Mumbai, he left that identity and all his documents behind. On reaching Nagpur, he adopted the name Anil Nagpure. His mentor, Milind Teltumbde, described as the biggest Naxal commander Maharashtra has seen, brought him the tenth-grade mark sheet and school-leaving certificate of a real student named Anil Nagpure. Using these two documents as a base, he created some more fake papers and took admission in Dhanwate College in Nagpur.

Vikas also claimed that the real Anil was not a bright student and did not want to study further, so he had willingly handed over his documents to Milind Teltumbde.

During his studies in Nagpur, he kept changing residences every few months, living in areas such as Chandan Nagar, Medical Chowk, Pachpaoli and Jaripatka. In Nagpur, he studied without any trouble from the eleventh grade up to second-year BA. He had also studied up to second-year BA in Mumbai, but since his documents there had been left behind, he restarted from the eleventh grade under his new name in Nagpur.

During this period, 19 of his fellow Naxals were caught by the police in Chandrapur, and following the trail from that investigation, the police also began searching in Nagpur. The police reached his college, and as soon as they learned the name Anil Nagpure, they began looking for him. However, Vikas was not caught. Instead, the police arrested the real Anil Nagpure, whose documents Vikas had used to study under a fake name, and questioned him for several days. Once the police realised he was the real Anil Nagpure and that a Naxal had used his documents, he was released. But by then Vikas had already left Nagpur and reached safety in the forests of Gadchiroli.

Vikas Ramaswamy claims he only used Anil Nagpure's documents, and since Anil had no interest in studying, he suffered no academic loss. He further claimed that the studies pursued in Anil's name earned 75 percent marks in the twelfth grade, marks he said the real Anil could never have achieved on his own.

The case has made a major disclosure about how the network of Naxalism has spread in Maharashtra's urban areas. The surrendered Naxal commander, Vikas alias Anil Ramaswamy Mekala, said he attracted students towards Maoist ideology while studying in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Kolhapur, and the well-known Ramniranjan Jhunjhunwala College in Mumbai. Reacting to the entire matter, Special Inspector General of Police for the anti-Naxal campaign, Sandeep Patil, said urban Naxalism poses a major challenge to the security of the country and the state.