Giving Up on Mao

IN APRIL THIS year, a man the top Maoist leader had en­trusted his life to, became scared for the safety of his own and crossed over to the other side. Babu Kawasi had been Maoist chief Basavaraj’s personal bodyguard since 2016—at that time he was the head of the CPI (Maoist)’s Central Military Commission. Before that, Kawasi had been a bodyguard to previous Maoist chief Ganapathi as well. As part of the party’s Company No 7, Kawasi had guarded its top leadership for 15 years before he gave up. In April, he left the Maoists along with his wife and surrendered to the police.

Kawasi said he had felt the jungle closing in on him. As secu­rity forces began to push into the Bastar region, drastically shrink­ing the areas Maoists had once control over, the game began to change. Maoists had pockets of sympathy among the Adivasis. But with the security thrust, the leadership became more and more paranoid and turned against the Adivasis they were sup­posed to fight for, resulting in scores of killings of people on sus­picion of being police informers. The people who formed the core base of the Maoists began to turn against them.

Less than a month after Kawasi’s surrender, his former boss was trapped in the hitherto inaccessible jungles of Abujhmad and killed along with 26 other guerrillas.

Kawasi is not the only man for whom the jungle turned inhos­pitable. In the last few months, there has been a wave of surren­ders, signalling a decisive shift among the Maoist cadre. In July, in one instance, 66 Maoists, including a number of mid-level leaders who collectively carried a reward of over ₹2 crore, surrendered. Before that, 22 others surrendered together. Many others are sur­rendering in smaller numbers as well. “The top leadership of the Maoists is almost gone,” said P Sundarraj, Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range), a key man behind the latest push against the insurgents in the region. “In their absence, the grip on the local cadre is loosening and they are now surrendering after realising the futility of the movement,” he said.

The surrenders have risen since 2024, but this year the number has increased significantly. Last year, 881 Maoists surrendered in Chhattisgarh; till July this year, already around 700 Maoists had surrendered. At the same time, many among the senior Mao­ist leadership have been killed in encounters or arrested. Police sources in Chhattisgarh say the willingness to surrender has become more pronounced after Basavaraj’s killing. Earlier, dur­ing monsoons, anti-Maoist operations would be halted across areas affected by left-wing extremism (LWE). But this year, spurred by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the operations are continuing. These are helped by a big push of road network and mobile connectivity. Earlier, mobile towers would become a tar­get of Maoists as soon as they were installed. But as the security push intensifies, a number of forward bases have been built in areas where earlier security forces did not operate at all. This also provides security for the towers, many of which have been built inside the camp premises. In the last few months, hundreds of such towers have been installed, leading to a sea change in con­nectivity. In the last 18 months, at least 46 such forward bases have been established in interior areas.

“These bases have also prevented Maoists from establishing contact with villages from where they would recruit earlier,” said Sundarraj. Now, Maoists are not able to hold meetings within four-five square kilometres of area around the base.

Earlier this year, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) estab­lished its final forward base in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district to facilitate the construction of the highly coveted Highway 130D, a 113-km road which will connect Abujhmad in Chhattisgarh to Nagpur in Maharashtra. Abujhmad had remained inaccessible for years, and many of the senior Maoist leaders remained in hiding there. But now, security forces have entered the area; Basavaraj’s kill­ing in this area has led to further operations. In July, the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) laid an iron bridge on the road to Puvarti, the native village of the dreaded Maoist commander Hidma. During the monsoon, the entire road would turn into a river, making Puvarti and several other villages on the route inaccessible. But now, us­ing this bridge, villagers can travel freely, and so can security forces.

As the CPI (Maoist) struggles with a lack of leadership, its cadre are surrendering in other areas as well. In July, in Andhra Pradesh, a senior Maoist leader and his wife surrendered. The leader, Nagaraju alias Kamlesh, had been underground for 34 years; he had worked as the in-charge of East Bastar Division of the CPI (Mao­ist). The Andhra Pradesh police chief issued a warning to Maoists, saying they had another seven months (March 2026 deadline set by Amit Shah) to surrender after which they will be neutralised. Around the same time, two senior Maoist leaders, Mala Sanjeev and his wife Perugula Parvathi, surrendered in Telangana. Both had worked in crucial positions in the party; they said they found it difficult to remain with the party. Around the same time, the police in Hyderabad arrested a senior Maoist leader, Narla Sri Vidya, a State Committee Member of the CPI (Maoist). She is the sister of another senior Maoist leader, Narla Ravi Sharma, who was arrested in 2009 and came out on bail in 2016—he was rearrested along with his wife in 2019 on charges of aiding the Maoists. Sri Vidya’s partner is also a senior Maoist leader. In Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli division as well, several high-profile surrenders have taken place.

Till a few years ago, the stretch in Bastar region, from Sukma town to the last village, Jagargunda, roughly a distance of 100km, used to be called the Maoist Tora Bora. On this stretch lay villages like Polampalli, Kankerlanka, Puswara, Timilwade, Chintagufa, Burkapal, Chintalnar, Narsapuram, and finally Jagargunda, which the Maoists lorded over. The entire road, whatever existed of it, had been cut off and the insurgents had laid landmines at several places to prevent the movement of security personnel. On both sides of this road, from Dornapal town to Jagargunda, is a dense forest dot­ted with tiny hamlets. Electricity had come to Chintalnar village on the Dornapal-Jagargunda road in 1986. In the mid and late-70s, Thakur traders from Uttar Pradesh made Chintalnar their home. Some of them set up small liquor distilleries in the area. In 1987, a large platoon of Maoists burnt down over a dozen houses belonging to these traders and looted several guns that had traditionally been in their possession. By the early 2000s, Maoists had turned the entire Bastar division into a guerrilla zone.

A few years ago, when security forces began entering these areas, they had very little to work with. The maps of the area they had to make do with were outdated as well. But as the road and mobile net­work began to improve, the forces began to push through interior areas. This push came at a big cost. For every kilometre of road, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) lost men to IED blasts.

But this also expanded the interface of security forces with Maoists. In Bastar, the government adopted a four-pronged ap­proach to fight Maoists. While the operations were kept up, de­velopment, connectivity and confidence-building measures ran parallel. Earlier, the Adivasis would be suspicious of the security forces. There were instances when small things a company of CRPF gave them—stuff like household articles—would later be found lying on the periphery of the village. Language was a big barrier. This began to change as well. Small medical facilities run by the forces were a winner. The formation of DRG, a force con­sisting of Adivasis, even those who were once with the Maoists, also turned the tide. The surrendered Maoists knew the fighting pattern of their erstwhile comrades. Sources say that during the interrogation of surrendered Maoists, it came to the fore that the senior Maoist leadership was worried about the effectiveness of DRG. That the Adivasi women were also a part of this force also helped a lot to establish rapport in the interior areas.

On July 27, electricity arrived for the first time at Metaguda in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district. This was introduced under the government’s Neyad Nellanar scheme, which means ‘Our model village’. The scheme brings 52 programmes of 17 departments to villages located within a five-kilometre radius of security camps; since then the distance has now been increased to 10km. This has also prompted the villagers to demand a security camp in their area, something they would oppose earlier.

What remains of the Maoist leadership is a small number of senior leaders who, the police are confident, will not last long. This includes Hidma and other leaders like Bhupathi, Kosa, and Misir Besra. “Their egos will perhaps not allow them to surren­der,” said Sundarraj. “We don’t take pleasure in killing them, but if they are unwilling to surrender, then so be it.”

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