Fake Naxals Arrested

Warangal: The Warangal commissionerate police on Monday arrested four persons who were posing as Naxals and were involved in extortion. A fake pistol, Rs 1.65 lakh in cash, 16 cell phones, a laptop and a pen knife were recovered from them.

“The members of the pseudo Maoist gang were identified as Pusala Srimannarayana and Narmetta Nagaraju of Thorrur in Mahbubabad district, Potha-raju of Kamareddy village of Parkal mandal in Warangal Rural district and Dharavath Srinivas of Cheruvumundu thanda of Kodakandla mandal in Jangaon district,” said police chief V. Ravinder.

The gang leader Srimanna-rayana is a postgraduate and worked as a contract lecturer in the Raiparthy Government College in the past. He also ran an educational and job consultancy. After incurring losses, he chose to extort money from politicians, contractors, businessmen by posing as a Maoist, said Mr Ravinder. So far Srima-nnarayana together with his friends Nagaraju, Potharaju and Srinivas have extorted Rs 1 lakh from a chit fund owner, Rs 50,000 from a realtor, Rs 30,000 from a realtor belonging to Tirumalagiri of Suryapet district and `10,000 from a kirana shop owner in Jangaon.