Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Delhi University professor GN Saibaba was picked up by the Maharashtra Police`s anti-naxal unit on Friday for his alleged links with Maoists.

The English professor with Delhi University has in the past been questioned on a number of occasions for his alleged links with the banned outfit.

Earlier this year, a police team from Maharashtra`s Gadchiroli district, hotbed of Maoist activities, quizzed Saibaba for several hours after it had conducted a forensic analysis of his computer seized in mid-September last year.

The name of Saibaba cropped after the arrest of a Jawaharlal Nehru University student Hem Mishra who had claimed before the probe agencies that he was acting as a courier between the professor and banned cadres of Maoists holed up in Abujmad forests in Chhattisgarh.

The sources said some of the documents recovered from the computer them had been shown to the professor and used to question him about his association with cadres of the banned outfit.

Accused of acting as an overground worker for the banned outfit, police has alleged that the professor runs an organisation which was acting as a front for CPI-Maoist, a charge denied by Saibaba.

Police had claimed that besides Mishra, two other arrested Maoist leaders Kobad Gandhy and Bacha Prasad Singh had named Saibaba as their contact in the national capital.

The police action against Saibaba has come under criticism from his colleagues in the past.

(With Agency Inputs)