Mahato — the cousin of jailed PCAPA convenor Chhatradhar Mahato — was picked up by plainclothesmen from his ancestral home at Birkar in Lalgarh police station area, said his mother Durga Mahato.

The plainclothesmen, who came on motorcycles, took him away towards the Pirakata police camp. “We immediately went to the camp and requested the officers to allow us to meet Manoj, but they said he was taken to Midnapore,” she said. The family will now approach the Lalgarh police.

In Kolkata, state Home Secretary Samar Ghosh denied that Mahato had been picked up. The Superintendent of Police, West Midnapore, said, “I do not have any information on this.”

Chhatradhar Mahato was also arrested from the same village in September 2009.

The Central government, meanwhile, said it would not conduct a “separate inquiry” into the death of Maoist leader Azad.

“The Andhra Pradesh Police has put out a version,” said Union Home Secretary G K Pillai. The postmortem report and the FIR are before the court in Andhra Pradesh. “If the court finds it dissatisfactory, there will be an independent or magisterial inquiry as per court directive. The Home Ministry will not initiate a separate inquiry.”

Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad was killed in an encounterwith police in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh on July 1. To a question whether Azad’s killing was a fake encounter, he said: “Azad’s 10-page message before his death shows that he was not bringing any message of peace. He was raving again about the old Maoist ideology of arms revolution. We don’t stand in a parliamentary democracy for an armed revolution. What are the issues? There are developmental issues, tribal issues, but they are not to be discussed. There are legal solutions, political solutions. There are issues of implementation. Nobody is saying the government is perfect.”