Sources confirmed to The Indian Express that police were “tipped off” that Dipak “would be seen carrying a red and silver polythene bag and an English leisure magazine.”

With this information — and an old photograph of his — several officers of the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID), in plainclothes, threw a ring around the bus-stop in Sarsuna at 4 am on Tuesday posing as tea-shop customers, passers-by and locals.

“This is one of the biggest catches in West Bengal. It was a tough and unexpected call for us. We had information that a senior Maoist leader was to come at the bus-stand to meet a courier sent by another Maoist leader. We did not even know what time he would come. So our men waited since 4 am,” said Raj Kanojia, ADG CID. Dipak used no cellphones and did not carry any firearm.

“Around 8 pm, we spotted Dipak carrying the polybag and the magazine. When the courier did not arrive, he got restless. We then apprehended him,” said a senior officer. Dipak tried to escape, even hit one of the officers, police said.

Kishenji today said the Maoists were ready for talks with the Centre if it “unconditionally” freed all arrested Maoists, including Dipak. Officials said that Dipak’s arrest and Kishenji’s reaction are pointers to what they think are rumblings in the Maoist ranks against Kishenji’s offer of talks with the Centre.

Police said they recovered Rs 53,000 and “Maoist literature, an audio cassette, clothes, a toothbrush and shaving kit” from Dipak who, they believe was “planning to shift base.”

From a polytechnic graduate to an explosives expert, Dipak’s journey to West Bengal began from a small house in Guntur town.

A diploma student in mechanical engineering at the Government College in Guntur, Dipak was 17 when he got involved with the Radical Students Union, the student wing of the former People’s War Group (PWG). A state intelligence official says that because of his “extreme revolutionary ideas,” he rapidly rose in the RSU to become General Secretary of the Andhra Pradesh RSU.

Covertly, PWG leaders were also grooming him for “a bigger role away from home.”

By 1992, when he was 30, Dipak had 10 cases of attempt to murder, arson and intimidation against him and had already gone underground. It was then that the PWG asked him to go to West Bengal to join Maoist cadres.

He first went to Jharkhand where he met a fellow Maoist from Andhra, who was quickly rising in the Maoist hierarchy — Mallojula Koteshwara Rao alias Kishenji. Under Kishenji’s tutelage, Dipak is learnt to have studied Maoist operations in Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal. After a few months, he moved to West Bengal.

“His whereabouts till 2000 are not known but during this time he turned into a deadly expert at explosives, landmine traps, hit-and-run warfare, ambushes, and planning military-precision strikes on police and government officers,” says an intelligence official.