Nagpur/Raipur, Oct. 15 -- Senior Maoist leader and CPI (Maoist) politburo member, Mallojula Venugopal alias Bhupathi, 69, the first senior Naxal leader to call for abandoning the armed struggle, surrendered before the Maharashtra's Gadchiroli police on Monday night along with 10 senior party leaders and 61-armed cadre, at Laheri, on the fringes of Abujhmad in Chhattisgarh. According to Gadchiroli police, Venugopal and his associates will formally lay down their arms before Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday, October 16, nine months after his wife surrendered before Fadnavis in Gadchiroli. "He was in negotiation with Maharashtra police for the last few days to negotiate the terms and conditions of the surrender with cadres," a senior police official said. He has been kept in a safe house in the district and was being interrogated by intelligence officers, the official added. Venugopal's surrender reinforces perception of a split in senior ranks of the CPI(Maoist). This took the form of a six-page statement he released on September 17, advocating surrender, and claiming the Maoists were unable to adapt to India's changing conditions and had suffered losses across their strongholds. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) central committee issued a statement in response, characterising Venugopal's call for surrender as a personal position. Its spokesperson said the cadres should not get confused. "We shall continue and intensify our struggles against the fascist, anti-people policies of the BJP government," he said. According to a senior intelligence official aware of the development, Venugopal first got in touch with Telangana police around the time he released the statement. However, as the things did not work out with Telangana police, the intermediators contacted the Maharashtra police. "All the talks happened in the last three to four days," said a senior Maharashtra police official....