Guwahati, April 27: Five persons were convicted by the NIA Special Court, Guwahati 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).

On July 1, 2011, NIA had registered a suo moto case 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.

Those convicted have been identified as PLA’s N. Dilip Singh alias Wangba alias N. Ranjit alias Jana of Manipur, Senjam Dhiren Singh alias S. Babu Singh alias Dhiren Singha alias Raghu of Assam, and Arnold Singh alias Kh. Arnold Singh alias Arnold Singha alias Becon of Assam.

The others are Indranil Chanda alias Raj of West Bengal, and Amit Bagchi alias Amitabh alias Alok alias Sumit alias Arun alias Anil alias RK da of West Bengal, both belonging to CPI (Maoist).

Investigation 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.