Senior Maoist leader Tiberi Tirupati alias Devoji and several senior cadres laid down their arms on Tuesday in Telangana. At the heart of this historic surrender was IPS B Sumathi, a sari-clad officer whose strategic vision and patient negotiations helped bring some of the most hardline Maoist leaders back into the mainstream.
As head of the Telangana Police’s Special Intelligence Branch, Sumathi is said to have supervised the long talks that convinced Devoji, a key member of the central committee of the banned Maoist party, along with Malla Raje Reddy and two other senior cadres, to lay down their arms.
“They surrendered because of the excellent efforts of Special Intelligence Branch IG Sumathi and the SIB team. They played a crucial role in helping them understand the prevailing conditions and join the mainstream,” Reddy told the media, according to news agency PTI.
Who is IPS officer B Sumathi
Sumathi, a 2001 batch intelligence officer, has been an experienced intelligence official for over two decades.
She has overseen the surrender of 591 Maoist leaders and cadres over the past two years, and has quietly led the delicate negotiations and operations that brought top extremists back into the mainstream, PTI reported.
Sources say she played a key role in covert operations during her previous stint in the counter-intelligence cell. She was first posted in Warangal (then part of undivided Andhra Pradesh) and became an IPS officer in 2006.
During her career, she also worked as General Manager of the Women’s Protection Cell at the Criminal Investigation Department.
Police sources explained that the SIB team’s approach was carefully calibrated: the leaders “will become martyrs if they lose their lives in confrontations, heroes if they are captured, while they will become zeros if they surrender.”
Sumathi was so sure that this strategy worked that he convinced Devoji, who had no plans to abandon the Maoist path, to surrender.
Unlike other Maoist leaders such as Malugula Venugopal Rao, alias Sonu, who surrendered in Maharashtra last October, Devoji’s surrender required delicate negotiations. Sumathi’s leadership in intelligence and negotiations made the difference, according to police officials.
(with PTI inputs)
