According to police records, Pramod Mishra hailed from Kasma village in Bihar’s Aurangabad district and joined the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) in the early nineties. He was elected to the central committee of the CPI (Maoist) which was formed in 2004 after the merger of the MCCI and the CPI (ML) People’s War Group (PWG).

In 2007, Mishra was elected as a member of the CPI (Maoist) politburo and became the in-charge of its operations in Delhi at the 9th Party Congress and was believed to have played an important role in expanding the party’s base in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, a police officer remarked.

The officer alleged that Mishra had eight known aliases such as Sohan Da, Shukla Ji, Kanhaiya, Jagan Bharat, Noor Baba, Biwi Ji, Agni and Ban Bihari.

Mishra was arrested by Bihar special task force in 2008 and was imprisoned till 2017 when he was released after being acquitted in all cases against him due to lack of evidence. He initially spent a few months at his native village after his release before reentering the Maoist underground.