Maoist leader Anuradha dead

HYDERABAD: The lone woman member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) Central Committee, Anuradha Ghandy, also known as comrade Narmada and Rama, has died of cerebral malaria on April 12. She was 54.

A release by the Central Committee spokesman Azad said here on Monday that Ms. Anuradha had returned from the Bihar-Jharkhand region after attending to party work. She did not take the fever seriously as blood tests had tested negative for malaria.

Ms. Anuradha joined the Maoists in the early 1970s while being a student and was one of the founder-members of the CPI(ML) in Maharashtra. Over the last three decades, she played an active role in the student, Adivasi, literary and cultural movements.

She served as a member of the Vidarbha regional committee and the Maharashtra State Committee and was elected to the Central Committee in the Unity Congress (Ninth Congress) held in January 2007.

She was also in charge of the party’s central sub-committee for women.

Paying rich tributes to her, Mr. Azad said the party would fulfil the revolutionary ideas to which Ms. Anuradha had dedicated her