Top Maoist Teltumbde killed in Saturday’s op

entral committee member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), Milind Teltumbde, was among the 26 Maoists killed in an encounter with police in Gadchiroli on Saturday, Maharashtra police confirmed on Sunday.

Teltumbde, who carried a reward of ₹50 lakh, was instrumental in building the Maoist movement in the state, along with Gondia, Balaghat and Mandla regions in Madhya Pradesh and the Rajnandgaon region in Chhattisgarh, over the last two decades.

After years of evading both central and state agencies, security officials believe Teltumbde’s death will be a “big setback” for the Maoist movement in the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh (MMC) zone.

“He was the only future of that movement and there were no other leaders in Maharashtra,” Gadchiroli deputy inspector general of police Sandip Patil said on Sunday.

HT on Sunday reported that Teltumbde was among the targets of the police offensive, the largest such counter-insurgency operation since 2018, when 42 Maoists were killed in two separate encounters in the area.

Saturday’s encounter broke out when a team of the elite C-60 commandos was conducting a search operation in the Mardintola forest area of Gadchiroli, about 900km from Maharashtra’s capital Mumbai.

Nearly 100 Maoists rained bullets at the commandos when the gun battle broke out around 6.30am on Saturday, Gadchiroli superintendent of police Ankit Goyal said on Sunday.

“A team of 300 police personnel, including C-60 commandos and SAT, along with additional SP Soumya Munde launched the anti-Naxal operation. They started conducting a search operation on Thursday night in the forest. Around 6am on Saturday, over 100 ultras opened a heavy firing with their sophisticated weapons and ammunition on C-60 commandos and Special Action Team (SAT) personnel,” he said.

After the encounter ended nearly 10 hours later, bodies of 26 Maoists were recovered from the site, he said. The dead rebels included 20 men and six women, Goyal said, adding that 10 of them were yet to be identified.

Apart from Teltumbde, several senior members of the outfit were killed in the encounter, including Mahesh alias Shivajiraoji Gota and Lokesh alias Mangu Madkam, both divisional committee members, who carried rewards of ₹16 lakh and ₹20 lakh, respectively.

Teltumbde’s bodyguard, Bhagat Singh alias Pradeep alias Tilak Mankur Zade, was also killed in the encounter. Singh carried a reward of ₹6 lakh on his head.

The 57-year-old, who earlier served as the secretary of the Maharashtra unit of the CPI(Maoist), was recruited for the Maoist movement by the senior ultra-left leader, Kobad Gandy, and his wife, late Anuradha Gandy, in the late 1980s.

Gradually climbing up the Maoist hierarchy, Teltumbde became a ruthless rebel over the years and was involved in the planning of several encounters against the security personnel.

He had 67 major offences, including participating in encounters against the police, murder and dacoity, registered against him in Gadchiroli alone, the district police said in a release.

After being promoted as a central committee member of the outfit in 2013, Teltumbde was tasked with creating a new territory in the MMC region for easy passage of the senior rebel leaders and diverting the central government’s attention from hilly areas to the MMC zone, Patil said.

Over the last decade, the Maoists were working towards the expansion of the movement in north Chhattisgarh and south Madhya Pradesh, he said.

“Considering his contribution to the Naxal movement and his influence among some parts of the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra and urban areas, he was a very important and key cadre and we were searching for him since a very long time,” the Gadchiroli DIG said.

According to intelligence officials, Teltumbde was regularly visiting the MMC region, and recruited about 100 people for Vistaar Dalam, a commando unit of the CPI(Maoist) in the region.

The elusive Teltumbde was known by various aliases, including Jiva, Deepak or Bada Deepak, Praveen, Arun, Sudhir, Sahyadri, Podadi.

Teltumbde, along with his brother Anand Teltumbde, was an accused in the Bhima Koregaon violence case. Anand, a Dalit scholar, is lodged in Taloja jail in connection with the case.

The National Investigation Agency, in its charge sheet in the Elgaar Parishad case, called Teltumbde a “dreaded Maoist”, and declared him absconding.

His wife, Angela Sontakke, was arrested by the state police in Thane about a decade ago. She was released on bail in 2016.

Pahad Singh, a senior Maoist leader who surrendered in 2018, said a heavily-armed platoon of bodyguards used to accompany Tetumbde into the forests.

“He was the person who pushed the idea to develop Amarkantak as ‘base area’ of MMC, in a meeting in 2016, in which Central Committee Members (CCM) of the CPI(Maoists) including him were present,” a senior Indian Police officer (IPS) officer, who interrogated Pahaad Singh, said on condition of anonymity.

Maoists have waged an armed struggle against the government over the last four decades. Gadchiroli, one of Maharashtra’s most backward districts has served as a hotbed for Maoist activities.

According to estimates of the intelligence bureau, about 500 CPI (Maoist) cadres active in Gadchiroli district have nearly 4,000-5,000 local supporters.

(With agency inputs)