The Death of Hidma

WHEN THE END came, it was not far-off from home. Madvi Hidma, the ruthless and elusive Maoist commander who was responsible for hundreds of deaths in the South Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, was finally gunned down along with his wife Rajakka—also in the Maoist ranks—in the dense forests near Maredumilli village, just across the border in Andhra Pradesh. There is, of course, no direct road from Puwarti, Hidma’s home in Sukma district, to Maredumilli. But that was never an impediment for his reign of terror in this huge swath of territory that covered multiple states and districts. With his death, one of the last pegs anchoring Maoism has come unstuck.

 Hidma was killed in an encounter with the Greyhounds, the specialised unit of the Andhra Pradesh police for tackling the Mao­ist insurgency. But it was an operation with a difference. Unlike the usual ‘fierce’ encounters between the Maoists and security forces, Hidma did not have enough ammunition to wage a sus­tained gun-fight. It has been reported that he barely had 25 to 50 rounds of ammunition for his weapon. This was highly unusual for the Maoist commander who had mul­tiple layers of security around him and had proved impossible to catch even after sus­tained efforts by police forces across states in this region. He was, clearly, on the run.

One reason a myth began to accumu­late around Hidma, that of his invincibility and his shrewdness, owed to non-existent efforts to create the necessary security ap­paratus and physical infrastructure in South Bastar over the past many decades. It is interesting to note that Hidma’s last murderous operation was on April 3, 2021, the killing of 22 CRPF troopers, at Teku­lagudem in Sukma district. After that, his ability to carry out major operations was degraded continu­ously until the morning of November 18 when he was hunted down. The slow but steady collapse of the insurgent ecosystem in Chhattisgarh left him with no option but to run for safety. He did not make it.

The story can be told from the events that have transpired since late March this year. At that time, the first appeals for ceasefire began to be made by the CPI (Maoist) and their intellectual supporters in New Delhi and elsewhere. These “overtures for peace” were wel­comed and on April 5, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while speaking on the occasion of “Bastar Pandum” in Dantewada, said, “Even today, I have come to request all Naxalite brothers, those who have arms in their hands and those who don’t, that you lay down arms, join the mainstream. You are our own. No one is happy when a Naxalite is killed, but this region wants development…”

But that moment came and passed. The Maoists did not lay down arms, the gesture necessary for halting operations, and nor did intellectuals urge them to do so. This was necessary given the loss of territory and the rapid elimination of Maoist cadres since 2024. A realistic appreciation of the situation should have forced Maoists and their intellectual backers to understand that peace was the only option they had unless they wanted annihilation in continuing with armed conflict. Unsurprisingly, they chose the latter path.

Then came the rapid onslaught against the Maoists. On May 21, the general secretary of the Maoist party, Nambala Kesava Rao alias Basavaraju, was killed in a remote area of the Indravati National Park that straddles Narayanpur and Bijapur districts of Chhattis­garh. Then, less than four months later, Mallojula Venugopal Rao, a CPI (Maoist) Politburo member, gave up arms before Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on October 15. In these months and later as well, hundreds of Maoists have surrendered across Ma­harashtra, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. A generalised collapse of sorts had begun.

It is interesting to compare the data on the number of Mao­ists and civilians who have been killed between May 21 this year (when Basavaraju was killed) and November 18 (when Hidma was gunned down) with the data for the same period last year. Any statistical regu­larity or causal inference requires a longer and more sophisticated treatment. But it is an interesting quirk that almost the same number of Maoists were killed during this period last year (143) and this year (144) while the number of civilians killed fell from 49 last year to 27 this year during the same period. (The data used here has been reported on the South Asia Terrorism Por­tal). A careful look at the data shows that most civilians now being killed by Mao­ists are either for local-level ‘score-settling’ or on suspicion of being government in­formers. This is a classic, late-insurgency pattern that has been seen in places as different as Punjab and Assam. In all likelihood, with the military wing of the Maoists being decimated, this trend should continue: the number of civilians being killed will fall further even as Maoist surrenders and deaths go up.

It is interesting to look at the dynamics of how Maoists went about controlling this area for so long. If one goes by the mythol­ogy of the ‘Maoist Movement’ written by authors like Jan Myrdal and Gautam Navlakha, “Maoists fought for justice” and their “gov­ernance structures” enabled people to engage in better agricul­tural practices and gave them healthcare. In reality, their strategy to control people and the territory under their grip was simple: instilling fear among people who lived in these far-flung territo­ries and ensuring that security forces could not reach these areas and deliver basic services like healthcare and education that the government was committed to provide. Precious years were lost in not doing anything to build security camps, roads and bridges that could help counter the Maoists. This is evident from Hidma’s

 bloody career in violence. As Maoists began losing territory, they should have adopted a different strategy. That did not happen. The reason is not hard to find: in spite of all the myth-making by intellectuals, the reality is that Mao­ists had no non-violent political pro­gramme unlike, for example, the CPI (ML) (Liberation) in Bihar. Violence had become an end in itself. When security forces began to reclaim ter­ritorial control, the game was up.

AS ONE LEAVES Puwarti on the dirt track towards the state highway from Awapalli to Jag­argonda, some five kilometres on the path lies Tekulagudem. Otherwise a nondescript village, similar to any other hamlet in South Bastar, Teku­lagudem is infamous for the April 3, 2021 massacre of 22 CRPF troopers. Hidma led that infamous massacre. At that time, there was information that he was in the vicinity of the area. Troopers from different directions—from Usoor in Bijapur, from Minpa in Sukma and from other locations as well— coalesced to Tekulagudem. What they found was an empty cluster of homes. The locals had been tipped off by the Maoists and a trap had been laid for the security forces. Ultimately, in the ensuing gunfight, they perished. Incidentally, another Maoist commander who provided cover to Hidma during that opera­tion, Chandranna—a Central Committee member of the Maoist party—escaped Hidma’s fate: he surrendered before Telangana police in late October. At that time (in 2021), he was present in that general area with 100-odd Maoists to give cover to Hidma.

Today, Tekulagudem boasts a security camp that was opened early last year as well as a helipad. The track to Puwarti passes through Tekulagudem. As one looks from the helipad, one can see forest cover starting barely 300 metres away. Another 300 metres beyond lie thickly forested hills that provide the high ground from where no target can escape in the low-lying area. This was the location where Hidma had his last ‘victory’. After 2021, he was never able to mount any worthwhile operation against the security forces operating in this remote area.

Two days after the attack, Home Minister Amit Shah visited the nearby CRPF camp at Basaguda (at that time, there was no camp at Tekulagudem or in its adjoining areas). There, he told a gathering of CRPF men that the Maoist menace would be tackled. He said, “When this battle has reached its final stage, without losing any courage, we have to continue this fight with the same valour with which you have fought for years until victory is achieved.”

The topography of the area has changed beyond belief since those grim days. Now, there is an array of camps not just in Puwarti and its adjoining areas but as far deep as Gunjaparti, the base of Karregutta Hills on the Telangana border. Transport and road infrastructure has grown rapidly. Earlier this year, a major operation was launched at that location. Hidma was believed to be present there at that time but he escaped.

In his long and infamous career of violence, Hidma inflicted grievous losses on security forces and civilians alike. Two other deadly incidents bear his name. Tadmetla in Sukma district, in­cidentally not far from Puwarti, where 76 CRPF men were killed and later, on May 25, 2013 when virtually the entire brass of Con­gress’ Chhattisgarh unit was killed near Darbha Valley in Sukma district. Apart from Mahendra Karma—the Congress leader from Dantewada who was the target of the Maoists—senior Congress leaders like Nand Kumar Patel, Vidya Charan Shukla and Patel’s son, were killed in a grisly manner on the slopes of the Darbha Hills.

Those events are now just bad memories. With the rapid elimination of the top ranks of the Maoists, only a handful of top leaders are left. These include the new general secretary of the party, Thippiri Tirupathi alias Devuji, who took over soon after Nambala Keshava Rao was killed and Misir Besra, a Politburo member who is holed up somewhere in Jharkhand. There is spec­ulation that security forces are closing in on Devuji. In any case, with the breakdown of the ecosystem that ensured the survival of the Maoist leadership—the petty contractors who provided them with essential supplies, the tendu leaf contractors who gave them financial support and a network of informants in the hamlets and towns in the area—it was just a matter of time before their top ranks were liquidated. That is unfolding virtually on a daily basis. The deadline for finishing off Maoism, set by Amit Shah—March 31, 2026—is now well within the zone achievement.