2 Maoists killed in Chhattisgarh gunfight amid heightened anti-Maoist operations
Maoists have lost top leaders this year with the government setting a target of eliminating Maoism from the country by next year
Two Maoists were killed in a gunfight with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district on Friday, a day after a senior Maoist leader was suspected to be among nine Left-wing insurgents dead in a gun battle in the central Indian state.
People aware of the matter said the fresh gunfight broke out during a search operation that was launched after security forces were tipped off about the presence of Maoists in Bijapur. Bodies of two Maoists, a .303 rifle, other weapons, explosives, and daily use items were recovered from the scene.
The gunfight was still underway even as security forces refused to specify its exact location and the strength of the forces involved, citing operational reasons.
On Thursday, security forces killed 10 Maoists in Chhattisgarh’s Gariaband. Modem Bala Krishna, a senior Maoist leader, was suspected to be among them. Krishna, also known as Balanna, Ramachandar, and Bhaskar, was the secretary of the Odisha State Regional Committee and a member of the Maoist Central Committee. He joined the Maoist movement in 1983.
An officer on Thursday said Krishna was likely to be among those killed, even as the identification of the bodies was being carried. Maoists have lost top leaders this year amid heightened anti-Maoist operations. The government has set a target of eliminating Maoism from the country by next year.
A June 23 Maoist Central Committee document acknowledged the killing of 357 Maoists over the last year. Maoist chief Nambala Kesava Rao alias Basvaraju was killed on May 20. Basvaraju’s killing inside a dense Chhattisgarh forest marked the most significant success against the Left-wing insurgency in years.
Basvaraju, the general secretary of the Maoists and the backbone of the insurgency in central India, was accused of masterminding attacks, including an ambush that left 76 security personnel dead in 2010.
The Maoist movement began in India in 1967 in West Bengal’s Naxalbari village. It spread to what is now Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra. Maoism has been described as the biggest threat to India’s internal security. It has suffered setbacks, but retained the capacity to launch attacks.
