Bhubaneswar: Arrested Trinamool Congress activist Karmu Mahto has confessed to Orissa police that he was a block-level leader of the party and took Maoist help to counter violence by CPI(M) cadres at Jhargram in West Bengal.
Bhubaneswar Commissioner of Police B K Sharma said on Wednesday that Mahto and had made the confession during interrogation yesterday.
Mahto was detained by Orissa police and arrested by West Bengal police on Monday from SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack along with two others - Deben Marandi and Manik Soren who had been admitted for treatment of injuries allegedly sustained during blasts.
"Mahto, when interrogated in Bengali opened up and confessed that he used to take help of Maoists to face the CPI-M activists ... Marandi and Soren confessed that they are active Maoists," Sharma, who himself interrogated Mahto and the other two men yesterday, said.
Sharma said Mahto also confessed that he organized meetings for Maoists and provided them with `other support`. He had also confessed that he had unsuccessfully tried to get Soren treated at private hsopitals in Cuttack.
"Marandi also admitted that he had made four bombs on December 5 and was finishing the fifth one when it exploded and killed a person, besides injuring seven others," he said.
Marandi and Soren were among the two injured. Marandi, undergoing treatment for grievous injuries, was operated upon today.
To a question, he said the trio were detained on Saturday and the police had received a phone call from an anonymous caller the next day threatening to blow up the police outpost at the SCB Medical College Hospital.
"Orissa and West Bengal police immediately took precautions at the hospital... This was the first such case at the premier hospital," Sharma said.
Asked whether Maoists from West Bengal were slipping into Orissa for treatment, Sharma said the Commissionerate of Police had no mechanism to determine it.
Two years ago police had nabbed Anna Reddy, a Maoist leader when he had visited a private hospital here.
PTI
