The police said that, a Canadian cyclist who had been held by the Naxals in the Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district was released. “John Szlazak, the Canadian national, has been released in Arnampalli forests. Security personnel brought him to Sukma district headquarters,” the Sukma Superintendent of Police Abhishek Meena told of PTI.

Szlazak, who works with the Canadian government’s agency ‘Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’ (IRCC), was on a bicycle expedition from Mumbai to Naxal-affected Bastar region of the Chhattisgarh from 14th March.

Members of the ‘Sangham’ (a village-level Naxal cadres and sympathisers) held the cyclist in evening of March 27th  when he was passing through Singamadgu under Chintagufa police station limits in the Sukma.

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The police started search for him after he sent an emergency alert through a GPS instrument attached to the bicycle. The police had said that the cyclist was held by the Naxals because the cyclist could not explain the purpose of his tour due to the language problem, and the naxals suspected him to be a police informer.

Police sent some local people to the village to inform his captors that he had no links with the security forces. The Sangham members freed him in the Arnampalli forests, from where he was taken to the Polampalli police station and brought to Sukma town.

The cyclist will be questioned about the purpose of his tour and how he reached the interior of Sukma, a local police officer said.

Mrudula Duddempudi.