Latest news with #Maoists'
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Indian Express
Maoists buried 2.5 tonnes of explosives to hide them from security forces
A joint operation by the Odisha police, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and specialised Jharkhand Jaguars unit has led to successful seizure of 2.5 of the four tonnes of explosives that were looted by some Maoists on May 27, police said. Some explosive gelatin sticks were seized from a Maoist hideout in a forest near Koida in Sundargarh district on the Odisha-Jharkhand border during a search operation Friday, Inspector General of Police (Western Range) Brijesh Rai said. 'To conceal explosives from aerial and ground surveillance, the Maoists buried the explosives underground. An intense search and intelligence inputs helped us to seize the explosives. Efforts are on to recover the remaining explosives,' said a senior police official. Police will examine the seized materials to determine its composition and place of origin from where the consignment was sent, said police sources. An armed group of 25-30 'Maoists' looted four tonnes of explosive gelatin sticks from an explosive-laden truck was on its way to a stone quarry at Banko on May 27. The quarry is inside the Saranda forests — an area bordering Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district. A search operation was launched soon to track down the explosives. Meanwhile, the Odisha Police instituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for the probe while the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which also launched a parallel probe into the incident, sent a team to the spot of the May 27 loot. Odisha Director General of Police YB Khurania camped in Rourkela for two days and held multiple meetings with senior police officers to monitor operations to recover the looted explosives. The DGP had also directed police to step up security measures in vulnerable areas.
Indian Express
6 days ago
- Indian Express
NIA takes over probe into explosives loot by ‘Maoists' in Odisha
The National Investigation Agency has taken over the investigation into the loot of a large cache of explosives by 'suspected Maoists' earlier this week. This comes as police and security agencies continue to look for the explosives, looted from a stone quarry in the state's Sundargarh district earlier this week. According to the police, an armed group of 25-30 'Maoists' looted four tonnes of explosive gelatin sticks from a stone quarry under K Balanga police limits in Rourkela police district Tuesday while an explosive-laden truck was on its way to the stone quarry at Banko. The quarry is inside the Saranda forests — an area bordering Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district. The group allegedly forced the driver to operate the vehicle but eventually released him. Odisha has witnessed significant fall in Maoist-related activities over the years with the presence of left-wing extremists limited to a few pockets only. Police sources said there was no Maoist-related activities in Sundargarh districts in the past 10 years. The Odisha Police, in coordination with the Jharkhand police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel, have launched search operations. The truck has been found but explosives are yet to be traced, police said. 'According to the first information received from the driver, those who looted the explosives were Maoists. Based on the information received from the driver, we have lodged an FIR. The investigation is continuing and operational procedures are being followed in the area,' said Deputy Inspector General of Police (Western Range) Brijesh Rai. Odisha Director General of Police YB Khurania visited the site and held meetings with senior police officers to monitor the operations. The DGP also directed police to step up security measures in vulnerable areas. Police sources said a NIA team also reached Rourkela Thursday and launched a probe into the matter. The NIA team is expected to visit the site of the loot, and is likely to question the driver of the vehicle. The border area with Jharkhand has been sealed by the security agencies. Police sources said instruction has also been issued to the local police to probe the licence details and other information related to the stone quarry. According to the White Paper published by the state's home department, only four Maoist-related incidents were reported in 2024 compared to nine such incidents in 2023. As part of the anti-Maoist operations, as many as six extremists were killed by security personnel and eight others were arrested in 2024. Meanwhile, 24 ultras surrendered.
India Today
28-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Did Chhattisgarh deny Basavaraju, 6 other Maoists last rites in native Andhra, Telangana?
On the evening of May 26, the Chhattisgarh police, armed with an order from an executive magistrate in Narayanpur district, cremated top Maoist leader Basavaraju and six of his associates killed in a gun-battle with the forces in the doing so, the police had denied family members the bodies of the insurgents for the last rites. The family members have questioned this as well as the different protocol exercised for the other insurgents, who were from May 21, 27 Maoists, including their top boss Basavaraju, were gunned down in a security operation in the jungles of Kudmel Jetlur in Abujhmadh in Narayanpur. Their bodies were brought to Narayanpur town, the district family members of the deceased Maoists began arriving the next day onwards to claim the bodies. Of these Maoists, Basavaraju and Jangu Naveen were from Andhra Pradesh while the others were from Telangana. The police apparently handed over the bodies of 20 Maoists from Chhattisgarh to their families but not of the remaining insurgents from Andhra and Telangana to their kin.A Chhattisgarh police statement said the family of one of the Maoists, Kosi, was concerned about spread of infection from the days-old corpse and had asked the police to do the cremation in May 27, Basavaraju's elder brother N. Dileshwar Rao told media outlet Dainik Bhaskar that his family had gone to Narayanpur to bring the body to their village for the last rites. Rao claimed the Chhattisgarh police initially told them to collect the body but then refused to hand it over. Subsequently, the family is claimed to have been questioned by the Andhra Pradesh police about the visit to Chhattisgarh police claimed the bodies could not be handed over as claims had not been made for them. 'Twenty bodies were handed over to family members after verifying the claims. For the remaining bodies, no legal claim was made, so the bodies were cremated in Narayanpur on the orders of an executive magistrate,' said Narayanpur additional superintendent of police Aishwarya Chandrakar in a was the cremation of Maoists from Andhra and Telangana not allowed in their native places? During the security operation a few weeks ago in the Karreguta Hills, on the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border, voices had emerged from within the Telangana civil society questioning the operation and demanding that it be stopped because it was targeting tribal people. Twenty-two Maoists are said to have been killed in the operation, which involved mobilisation of around 20,000 security personnel. Sources said the questioning of the Karreguta operation could be the reason the Chhattisgarh police were wary and had denied some Maoists' family members their who was general secretary of the CPI (Maoist), carried a bounty of over Rs 2 crore on his head. His death is being described as a body blow to Maoist insurgency, which is targeted by the Centre for elimination by next to India Today MagazineMust Watch
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
After decades of bloodshed, is India winning its war against Maoists?
Could India's decades-long jungle insurgency finally be approaching its end? Last week, the country's most-wanted Maoist, Nambala Keshava Rao - popularly known as Basavaraju - was killed along with 26 others in a major security operation in the central state of Chhattisgarh. Home Minister Amit Shah called it "the most decisive strike" against the insurgency in three decades. One police officer also died in the encounter. Basavaraju's death marks more than a tactical victory - it signals a breach in the Maoists' last line of defence in Bastar, the forested heartland where the group carved out its fiercest stronghold since the 1980s. Maoists, also known as "Naxalites" after the 1967 uprising in Naxalbari village in West Bengal, have regrouped over the decades to carve out a "red corridor" across central and eastern India - stretching from Jharkhand in the east to Maharashtra in the west and spanning more than a third of the country's districts. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh had described the insurgency as India's "greatest internal security threat". The armed struggle for Communist rule has claimed nearly 12,000 lives since 2000, according to the South Asian Terrorism Portal. The rebels say they fight for the rights of indigenous tribes and the rural poor, citing decades of state neglect and land dispossession. The Maoist movement - officially known as Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) - took formal shape in 2004 with the merger of key Marxist-Leninist groups into the CPI (Maoist). This party traces its ideological roots to a 1946 peasant uprising in the southern state of Telangana. Now, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government pledging to end Maoism by March 2026, the battle-hardened rebellion stands at a crossroads: could this truly be the end - or just another pause in its long, bloody arc? "There will be a lull. But Marxist-Leninist movements have transcended such challenges when the top leadership of the Naxalites were killed in the 70s and yet we are talking about Naxalism," said N Venugopal, a journalist, social scientist and long-time observer of the movement, who is both a critic and sympathiser of the Maoists. One of the senior-most officials in India's home ministry who oversaw anti-Maoist operations, MA Ganapathy, holds a different view. "At its core, the Maoist movement was an ideological struggle - but that ideology has lost traction, especially among the younger generation. Educated youth aren't interested anymore," says Mr Ganapathy. "With Basavaraju neutralised, morale is low. They're on their last leg." The federal home ministry's latest report notes a 48% drop in violent incidents in Maoist-related violence - from 1,136 in 2013 to 594 in 2023 - and a 65% decline in related deaths, from 397 to 138. However, it acknowledges a slight rise in security force casualties in 2023 compared to 2022, attributed to intensified operations in core Maoist areas. The report says Chhattisgarh remained the worst-affected state in 2023, accounting for 63% of all Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) incidents and 66% of the related deaths. Jharkhand followed, with 27% of the violence and 23% of the deaths. The remaining incidents were reported from Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. The collapse of Maoism in Chhattisgarh, a stronghold of the insurgency, offers key clues to the movement's broader decline. A decade ago, the state's police were seen as weak, according to Mr Ganapathy. "Today, precise state-led strikes, backed by central paramilitary forces, have changed the game. While paramilitary held the ground, state forces gathered intelligence and launched targeted operations. It was clear role delineation and coordination," he said. Mr Ganapathy adds that access to mobile phones, social media, roads and connectivity have made people more aware and less inclined to support an armed underground movement. "People have become aspirational, mobile phones and social media have become widespread and people are exposed to the outside world. Maoists also cannot operate in hiding in remote jungles while being out of sync with new social realities. "Without mass support, no insurgency can survive," he says. A former Maoist sympathiser, who did not want to be named, pointed to a deeper flaw behind the movement's collapse: a political disconnect. "They delivered real change - social justice in Telangana, uniting tribespeople in Chhattisgarh - but failed to forge it into a cohesive political force," he said. At the heart of the failure, he argued, was a dated revolutionary vision: building isolated "liberated zones" beyond the state's reach and "a theory to strike the state through a protracted people's war". "These pockets work only until the state pushes back. Then the zones collapse, and thousands die. It's time to ask - can a revolution really be led from cut-off forestlands in today's India?" The CPI (Maoist)'s 2007 political document clings to a Mao-era strategy: of creating a "liberated zone" and "encircling the cities from the countryside." But the sympathiser was blunt: "That doesn't work anymore." The party still retains some popular support in a few isolated pockets, primarily in the tribal regions of eastern Maharashtra, southern Chhattisgarh and parts of Odisha and Jharkhand - but without a strong military base. Ongoing operations by state forces have significantly weakened the Maoist military infrastructure in their strongholds in southern Chhattisgarh. Cadres and leaders are now being killed regularly, reflecting the rebels' growing inability to defend themselves. Mr Venugopal believes the strategy needs rethinking - not abandonment. The underground struggle has its place, he said, but "the real challenge is blending it with electoral politics". In contrast, Mr Ganapathy sees little hope for the Maoists to mount a meaningful fightback in the near future and argues that the time has come for a different approach - dialogue. "It would be wise for them to go for talks now and perhaps unconditionally or even lay down the conditions and let the government consider them. This is the time to approach the government instead of unnecessarily sacrificing their own cadres, without a purpose," he said. Maoists enjoy support in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana from mainstream political parties. In Telangana, both the ruling Congress and the main opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) have backed calls for a ceasefire, along with 10 smaller Left parties - an effort widely seen as aimed at protecting the group's remaining leaders and cadres. The Maoist movement, rooted in past struggles against caste oppression, still carries social legitimacy in parts of these states. Civil society activists have also joined the push for a truce. "We, along with other civil rights groups, demanded a two-step process - an immediate ceasefire followed by peace talks," said Ranjit Sur, general secretary of the Kolkata-based group Association for Protection of Democratic Rights. Maoist-affected states remain resilient strongholds in part because they are rich in minerals - making them sites of intense resource battles. Mr Venugopal believes this is key to the CPI (Maoist's) enduring presence. Chhattisgarh, for instance, is India's sole producer of tin concentrates and moulding sand, and a leading source of coal, dolomite, bauxite and high-grade iron ore, according to the ministry of mines. It accounts for 36% of the country's tin, 20% iron ore, 18% coal, 11% dolomite and 4% of diamond and marble reserves. Yet, despite strong interest, mining companies - both global and national - have long struggled to access these resources. "Multinational companies couldn't enter because the Maoist movement, built on the slogan 'Jal, Jangal, Jameen (Water, Forest, Land),' asserted that forests belong to tribespeople - not corporations," Mr Venugopal said. But with the Maoists now weakened, at least four Chhattisgarh mines are set to go to "preferred bidders" after successful auctions in May, according to an official notification. Mr Venugopal believes that the resistance won't die with the death of Maoist leaders. "Leaders may fall, but the anger remains. Wherever injustice exists, there will be movements. We may not call them Maoism anymore - but they'll be there."
Time of India
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Bastar top cop makes last call to Maoists to surrender
Raipur: In a strong worded statement, Bastar range inspector general of police P Sundarraj has made the last call to Maoists to surrender and give up the life of violence or be ready for a gruesome end. Bastar IG P Sundarraj on Tuesday warned, "Be it Maoist commanders like Ganapathy, Devji, Sonu, Hidma, Sujata, Basadeva, Ram Chandra Reddy, or any other DVCM or local militia cadre, this is the last offer for their safe life, to surrender under the rehabilitation policy of state govt or their end is destined. Let it be noted that the end will be terrifying for all those who killed innocent villagers and also became the reason for martyrdom of security personnel." Police are in contact with Maoists right from top cadres to locals and many other sources who wish to leave the organization and we welcome them to join the mainstream life, IG said, adding with assurance, "very soon many senior and lower cadres from CPI (M) are going to surrender." In a strong rebuttal to Maoists' statement claiming that their commander Basavaraju was caught alive and killed by security forces, Bastar range inspector general of police P Sundarraj replied that the Maoist press note was "half-baked, misleading and conspiring in nature. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Transformez les idées novatrices en stratégies d'investissement eToro Market Updates En savoir plus Undo " IGP Sundarraj said that the death of Basavaraju, the highest-ranking Maoist leader, represents not only a severe operational blow but also a psychological setback to the already demoralised Maoist network. He also condemned the Maoist narrative attempting to portray Basavaraju's death as a "supreme sacrifice," labelling it deliberate propaganda intended to glorify decades of bloodshed.
