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Journalism of Courage
“It’s over for the Maoists. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is finished,” said a Telangana-based intelligence officer, soon after Madvi Hidma, 51, one of the most wanted Maoist leaders, was killed in an encounter with the Andhra Pradesh police on November 18.
Besides Hidma, a Central Committee member of the CPI(Maoist), his wife and four others were among those killed.
While security and intelligence officials in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha believe Hidma’s killing is a huge setback for the outfit, they concede that they still have Thippiri Tirupathi alias Devuji and Misir Besra alias Sunirmal, both Politburo and Central Committee members, to reckon with.
Even as former Maoists and intelligence officials maintained that Devuji had been elevated to the role of the party’s general secretary, members of the banned outfit denied this, stating that the Central Committee had not yet met to determine who would lead the party next.
Hidma’s death is not the first big loss for the outfit this year.
On May 21, its general secretary Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju was killed in an encounter in Chhattisgarh along with 27 other cadres. These deaths, coupled with the Home Ministry’s deadline of March 2026 for the elimination of Maoists, have left the outfit at its “weakest” and its cadre “scattered”, said security officials.
This sentiment was reflected in letters written by Mallojula Venugopal Rao alias Sonu, 70, a Politburo member and the Maoist party’s ideological head, before he laid down arms in October this year in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli, along with 60 other cadres.
Sonu’s letters, in which he pushed for the “cessation of armed struggle”, had brought to light the ideological split in the Maoist party.
“The letters and counter-letters all revealed deep ideological fissures in the Maoist party,” says an intelligence officer.
Sonu’s letters triggered a war of words within the party, with Devuji, who then headed the central military commission or the outfit’s armed wing, accusing Sonu of being a “traitor”.
The same month, Sunirmal made a rare appearance to condemn a “ceasefire” that the Maoists, headed by Devuji, had reached with the Telangana police.
Faced with heightened security offensive and internal rifts, the Maoist outfit has shrunk, says a top police officer, adding that there were no recruitments to the outfit last year.
“The number of active cadres in the party has reduced to a handful now. Devuji is hiding somewhere on the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border, and Sunirmal cannot step out of the eastern region or Jharkhand,” says a security official.
The recent deaths and surrenders have crippled the Maoist party, the official said. “Over five central committee members, most of whom were from Telangana, have been killed. Rupesh, the party’s bombmaker, surrendered. So did Chandranna, who was an influential Central Committee member in the Telugu states. The party is seemingly facing an unprecedented crisis and buckling under pressure. Survival will be tough. It would be better if the remaining leaders put down their arms and surrender,” he says.
