Nagpur: Senior Maoist leader and Communist Party of India (Maoist) politburo member Prashant Bose alias ‘Kishan Da’ died Friday after a prolonged illness, at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences in Ranchi, ThePrint has learnt.
Bose was lodged at the Birsa Munda Central Jail in Ranchi along with his wife Sheela Marandi and other aides who were arrested by the Jharkhand Police in November 2021. In his 70s, Bose was a member of both the Politburo and the central committee and carried a bounty of Rs 1 crore at the time of his arrest.
“He was admitted to the RIIMS for age-related illness and died earlier today,” a Jharkhand police official confirmed to ThePrint Friday.
A West Bengal native, Bose was one of the founding members of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCCI) in 1970s. In 2004, the MCCI merged with the People’s War Group, which was active in Andhra Pradesh, among other southern states, to form the now-banned CPI (Maoist). At the time of his arrest in November 2021, Bose was secretary of the banned outfit’s Central Regional Bureau, which includes states such as Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha.
“He was one of the oldest and longest surviving leaders of the outfit after Kishanji’s encounter in 2021 and second only to Basavaraju at the time of his surrender,” an officer in the Left Wing Extremism sector told ThePrint.
Bose’s demise comes at a time when the entire Maoist leadership has been wiped out due to a spate of surrenders from its central committee and politburo. However, his successor Misir Besra who is looking after the Eastern Regional Bureau, continues to elude the police and security forces, and remains the last active Maoist leader in the forest ranges.
Bose, along with his wife and aides, namely Birendra Hansda and Raju Tudu of Giridih, and Krishna Bahada and Gurucharan Bodra of West Singhbhum, were arrested by the Seraikela-Kharsawan district on 12 November 2021 based on intelligence inputs about the movement of senior Maoist cadres from Giridih towards the Saranda forests in West Singhbhum.
The Jharkhand Police recovered cash amounting to Rs 1,51,000 from the SUV they were travelling in at the time of their arrest. From the vehicle, the police also retrieved one pen drive and two Samsung SSD data cards. Shortly after their arrest, they were transferred to the central jail in Ranchi, and the others continue to be lodged there since.
Bose was later charged by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2023, and the trials of both these cases were underway at the time of his death.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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