I killed Kishanji, not cops: Ex-Maoist

CHENNAI: Four years after the death of Mallojula Koteswara Rao, alias Kishanji in an encounter with CRPF's elite CoBRA team, a former Maoist operative has claimed that it was he and not the security personnel who killed the top Maoist leader.
In an interview to a Malayalam news channel, Asianet News, in Midnapore, West Bengal, Shantanu Mahato claimed that he betrayed Kishanji after the police promised to help him enter the mainstream society.
A member of the politburo and central military commission of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), Kishanji was a marksman and a shrewd fighter. The media-friendly Maoist remained underground for over 30 years, constantly waging war against the government.
Days after he was gunned down in November 2011 in West Bengal, American bimonthly Foreign Policy had reported that an insider had tipped off the security forces about Kishanji's whereabouts. Intelligence sources in Bengal had confirmed the report.
But Mahato's claims come as a new revelation as it had been widely reported that CoBRA forces had eliminated the Maoist leader. And in the season of polls, Bengal votes on April 4 and April 11, political parties can create a storm out of almost everything.