Indian police arrest a leader of Nepal's Maoist guerillas

A leader of Nepal's Maoist guerillas with a US$64,000 bounty on his head has been arrested in a border town in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

The Nepalese government, which welcomed the arrest as a major breakthrough, said it was a strong signal that India was no longer a sanctuary for Nepal's communist rebels.

Mohan Vaidya, the leading ideologue of the Communist Party, had undergone an eye operation for a cataract in an Indian hospital when police picked him up.

A local court on Tuesday remanded the bespectacled Maoist leader in custody for nine days. Kathmandu is now expected to ask for his extradition to Nepal.

Vaidya's arrest is the first major success since New Delhi, after consultations with Kathmandu, recently set up a special security and intelligence force to monitor the border with Nepal.

After the arrest of Vaidya, along with an Indian associate of Nepalese origin, Indian police raided Nepalese rebel hideouts in Siliguri and seized a wireless transmitter, computers, communist literature, a US manual on guerilla warfare and Russian-made binoculars.

'Comrade Mohan Vaidya's arrest is the consequence of the alliance and bargaining between Indian and Nepali feudal leaders,' said Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known as Prachanda, the leader of the Maoist rebels who model themselves on Peru's Shining Path guerillas.