New Delhi, April 6 -- Deep inside the dense Saranda forests in Jharkhand, over 3,000 CRPF CoBRA commandos from Chhattisgarh have been deployed as part of a high-stakes hunt for the last active CPI (Maoist) Central Committee member, Misir Besra. And as the elite troops turn the heat on one of the country's most wanted men, they have found support from an unlikely corner - his surviving family, estranged, but desperate to see him live. In his late 60s, Besra, who carries a reward of Rs.1 crore and comparable bounties in nearby states, is holed up in the forest along with a clutch of loyal troops. His family has made a final appeal routed through the government, calling on him to lay down arms. Security forces said Besra, known by the aliases Bhaskar, Sunil, Sunirmal, and Vivek, refuses to surrender, even as most other senior Maoist leaders have either laid down arms or have been neutralised over the past two years, following a renewed push by the Centre to wipe out the insurgents. Even as elite commandos of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) comb the forests, a more intimate appeal is being made from within Besra's family. Over the past month, the Maoist leader's son and his younger brother, Devilal Besra, have written letters urging him to surrender, saying the insurgency has effectively collapsed. "The government officials said they would somehow ensure that the letters reach him. Maybe it will compel him to surrender and join the mainstream like others. I wrote to him that I may not understand why he became a Naxal then, but I know that refusing to surrender or fighting the security forces now is wrong," his son, who asked not to be named, said. Besra's son, who works as a helper in a canteen in south India, said he last saw his father in the early 1990s when he was just five or six years old. "I have faint memories. My grandfather had taken me to the jungle to meet him. He then deserted us and then joined the Naxal ranks. After that, my mother also left us," he recalled. "I do not want to be identified because he has been a missing figure in my life, our lives. In all my documents, my uncle is my parent. I make an honest living. I don't want anyone to find out who my father is." According to Devilal Basra, the Maoist leader left his home in Girdih district around the late 1980s and never returned. "He was studying in PK Roy Memorial College, Dhanbad, where he completed his graduation. He must have met Naxals when he took admission in the post-graduation programme there," he said. "It has been almost 40 years. We only saw his photos in newspapers and were told that he had become a top Naxal leader with crores of rupees as the reward for his arrest."...