Three Maoists, including one carrying a cash reward of ₹1 crore on his head, were killed in a gun fight with security forces in the Pantitri forest area of Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district early on Monday, police said.
In a statement, the Jharkhand Police said the exchange of fire started at 6am. It added that security personnel recovered the bodies of Sahdeo Soren, the most wanted Maoist, and his two accomplices from the scene even as a search operation continued.
On Sunday, another Maoist, Sukhdeo Yadav, carrying a reward of ₹5 lakh on his head, was killed in the state’s Palamau district.
In Chhattisgarh, top Maoist leader Modem Bala Krishna was among around a dozen Left-wing insurgents killed last week amid heightened anti-Maoist operations. The Union 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.
{{/usCountry}}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.
{{/usCountry}}The Maoist movement began 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.