Disillusioned with the Maoist movement and expressing their wishes to lead a peaceful life, the Hyderabad police said that an elderly couple who were members of the banned CPI (Maoist) party, surrendered before them on Tuesday. The duo have been identified as 68-year-old Koti Purushotham and his wife, 63-year-old K Vinodhini.
The police said that Purushotham studied BOL (Bachelor of Oriental Languages) in Andhra Saraswatha Parishad, which was affiliated to Osmania University in the year 1974 before he went on to pursue his Masters in History in 1987.
Following this, he worked as a headmaster in Secunderabad's Maredpally area before he joined the CPI (Maoist) in 1981 at the age of 31, the police said.
A year after this, Purushotham married Vinodini, who was working as teacher in Addagutta area. He went on to work as a City Committee Member of Hyderabad between 1981 and 1986, later becoming the Committee Secretary, officials said.
The couple were reported to have gone underground shortly after thier marriage, and recruited around 60 cadres into the party and sent them to the forest for training before they were transferred to Visakhapatnam, the police said.
He later worked as the Vishakapatnam City Secretary from 1986 to 1996.
The couple were first arrested in March 1991 at Visakhapatnam along with two others but were released in May that year as part of a deal to release kidnapped sitting MLA P Sudheer Kumar, who was also the son of ex-Union Minister P Shiva Shankar.
From 1997 to 2000, the police said that the couple looked after the Agitation Propaganda Committee (APC) work by printing political texts while also simultaneously working in the Sub-Committee on Political Education (SCOPE) between 1996 and 2005.
"From 2005 to 2014, party directed him to stay in Chennai under the guidance of Akkiraju Hara Gopal. He was not given any responsibility. He was in contact with only Akkiraju Hari Gopal through letter correspondence for the last 13 years. He shifted to Hyderabad in 2014 and had been staying here since," the Hyderabad police said in a press release.
The police also said that Vinodhini was failing a series of health ailments including Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), Diabetes and Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML).
The police also said that the couple felt that the CPI (Maoist) was not changing its strategy and tactics according to changing circumstances and there was no hope for educated youth to work in the party, which they cited as one of the reasons to surrender.