Another big setback to Maoists, top commander killed in Bastar forests

Time of India

2 days ago

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Raipur/Hyderabad: Barely a fortnight after gunning down CPI(Maoist) general secretary Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju, security forces shot dead his long-time aide, central committee member Sudhakar alias Tentu Lakshmi Narasimha Chalam — the banned outfit's ideological chief — in a forest in Bastar's Bijapur district Thursday morning.
Born into a middle class family in Andhra Pradesh's Eluru district, Sudhakar, 67, carried a collective bounty of Rs 85 lakh in Chhattisgarh, Telangana and AP. He is the third central committee member to be killed in Bastar this year after Jai Ram alias Chalpathy and Basavaraju. He was the insurgents' ideological tutor, technical strategist, and political educator rolled into one, running the Maoist network in the three states.
Three days ago, TOI had reported that security forces in Bastar have precise information on the locations of nine top Maoist commanders in Bastar division, and an operation to eliminate them is imminent unless they surrender. On Wednesday, police got intel inputs about the location of some Maoist top guns in Indravati National Park. "It was very specific information on the presence of Sudhakar, Telangana state committee member Bandi Prakash, Dandakaranya special zonal committee member Papa Rao, and a few other armed cadres," Bastar Range IG P Sundarraj said.
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Troops from DRG, STF and CoBRA set out on foot to intercept them, traversing treacherous terrain in the dark, and caught sight of the Maoists early Thursday morning. The gunfight broke out with the rising sun. After a while, police found a body which was later confirmed to be Sudhakar's. He was clad in a blue shirt and an AK-47 had fallen from his lifeless hands.
"As in charge of the Maoist ideological training school RePOS (Revolutionary Political School), Sudhakar was involved in misleading and radicalising youth with violent and anti-national ideologies," Sundarraj said.
Sudhakar studied at CR Reddy College in Eluru and briefly enrolled for a course in Ayurveda in Vijayawada before abandoning academics. Drawn by radical leftist ideology, he joined People's War Group in 1986, beginning a journey that would last nearly four decades in the Maoist underground.
He became a public face during the 2004 peace talks between then AP govt and Maoists. Alongside senior leaders like Ramakrishna and Ganesh, he emerged from the forests to address a public gathering at Guttikonda Bilam in Palnadu.
The negotiations, held in Hyderabad from Oct 15 to 18, 2004, focused on ceasefire, land rights, and prisoners' release. However, with talks collapsing soon after, Sudhakar slipped back into the underground, this time into the heart of central India's dense forests.
Sudhakar played a key role in the outfit's technical wing, handling communications and equipment logistics vital to guerrilla warfare. Fluent in Telugu, Hindi, and Gondi, he combined political instruction with technical sophistication, a rare dual capability within the movement.
His wife, Kakarala Guru Smruthi alias Uma, is also an active Maoist and a state committee member in Dandakaranya zone.
Police is hopeful of "more success" in Indravati National Park. Security agencies said nine of the remaining 15 top Maoist leaders, collectively carrying bounties worth Rs 8.4 crore, are hiding in Bastar.
"Sudhakar's death is a major success for security forces and is a significant blow to the weakening Maoist leadership, particularly in Dandakaranya region," Sundarraj said. "It's a serious setback for the Maoist movement, particularly in the political education and technical domains," a senior anti-Naxal intel official from AP told TOI. "It creates a vacuum in the leadership structure of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee.
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