Guwahati/IBNS: An NIA Special Court in Guwahati Wednesday convicted five persons in the 2011 PLA-CPI (Maoist) nexus case related to a criminal conspiracy to threaten the unity, integrity, security, and sovereignty of India.

Three of the convicted accused belong to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and two to the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

NIA had registered a suo moto case on July 1, 2011, based on inputs that the PLA, a proscribed terrorist organization, had hatched a conspiracy to destabilize the country with the support of CPI (Maoist).

CPI (Maoist) leaders had agreed to recognize and support the separatist activities of PLA for the creation of the northeastern state of Manipur, as a separate nation.

The PLA leadership, on its part, decided to support the continuing war of CPI (Maoist) for overthrowing the constitutionally elected Government of India.

Investigations revealed that PLA had established a liaison office in Kolkata, where a meeting was held between PLA/RPF and CPI (Maoist) leaders.

Modalities were worked out at the meeting for taking unified action for waging a war against the Union of India.

A bipartite meeting was also held between PLA/RPF and CPI (Maoist) leadership in Jharkhand for imparting military training to cadres of CPI (Maoist) by PLA/RPF instructors.

It further came to light during the investigations that the SS President of PLA/RPF had also complimented the General Secretary of CPI (Maoist) on carrying out an attack on the security forces on April 6, 2010, resulting in the killing of 76 CRPF personnel in Chhattisgarh.

Investigations also revealed that the PLA had provided logistic support to Maoist cadres and both groups were regularly communicating and exchanging e-mails.

The accused persons had travelled to different places within and outside India, and created fake IDs and bank accounts under pseudonymous identities.

Based on these findings, the NIA had filed chargesheets in the case on May 21 and November 16 of 2012, as well as on July 31, 2014, in the NIA Special Court, Guwahati.

The court, after extensive hearings, on Wednesday convicted the five persons accused in the case u/s 121A IPC & Sec 18, 18A & 39 of UA(P)Act 1967.