Maoist Conflict At Crossroads: Chhattisgarh바카라�s Opportunity For Peace

The killing of seventy-year-old Maoist supremo Nambala Keshav Rao, alias Basavaraju, on May 21 in Abujhmarh, Chhattisgarh, changed everything on the Maoist front in Central India.

From April 21, the state has been targeting Maoists who have taken shelter in Karregutta Hills, situated on the border of Chhattisgarh and Telangana, with the intention of eliminating them. The security forces waged the 바카라�biggest battle ever바카라�바카라�named Operation Black Forest바카라�and around 10-20,000 security personnel surrounded Karregutta Hills. The state claimed that 350-500 Maoists, including big leaders like the head of Battalion 1, Hidma, were hiding there. While security forces managed to kill 31, not one could be captured alive. The operation ran for three weeks but eventually had to be called off in the wake of Operation Sindoor.

The security forces, however, managed to dismantle the Karregutta Hill base of the Maoists and disintegrate Battalion 1바카라�the most potent Maoist force바카라�into smaller groups. Although this will lead to fewer large-scale attacks by Maoists, I felt it will now be all the more difficult to locate these disintegrated groups and hence it will be impossible to meet the deadline of March 31, 2026 set by Home Minister Amit Shah. Also, the upcoming monsoon season will make the continuation of the operation in the dense forest incredibly difficult. But the killing of Nambala Keshav Rao, changed everything. It looks like along with local support, the state is now also privy to better tech intelligence. It has made all the difference in the past few years when the centre of gravity has definitely shifted towards the state.

For me, Operation Black Forest was a bit more personal. During those three weeks of the Karregutta fighting, I remembered Soni바카라�the Maoist divisional commander of the Kistaram area바카라�every day. She was called to Karregutta as the state forces were recapturing places like Kistaram in the past few years, fighting inch by inch, establishing forward operating bases.

I met Soni many years ago while researching for my book on Maoists. She was a bright young girl who spoke very little Hindi. I used to watch her delivering lectures to villagers in the Gondi language. I did not understand a word but was impressed by how attentively people would listen to her. She was the head of a dalam (group) in Kistaram in Bastar then.

It was a different time. She took me to see the Kistaram police station one day. It was like a cage. There was big barbed wire on all sides of the police station to protect the policemen from the Maoists. I was told helicopters came once in a while to deliver them ration.

Soni told me that as a child, she was attracted to the dance and drama troupes of the Maoists and wished to join one as soon as the opportunity arose. Probably that was the only thing to look forward to in Kistaram in those days. She often thought about home and was worried how her father was taking care of her two younger sisters after the death of their mother. But going back was not an option. It is to the credit of the Maoist party that they let sensitive people like Soni stay for so long. She must be 35-40 now. Girls like her make up around half of the Maoist force.

The Maoists have been demanding a ceasefire and peace talks lately since state forces, mainly thanks to the District Reserve Guard made of surrendered Maoists, have gone deeper into the forest due to which Maoist non-tribal leaders are also getting killed. The Maoist leadership did not bother much until now as only Adivasi foot soldiers were dying.

The Maoists had responded to a peace offer by Chhattisgarh in January 2024 with a string of preconditions to which the state government never replied. In private, the Maoists had told the people their reply was just a formality. Soon after, Chhattisgarh바카라�s peace talks offer was overturned by the Centre.

The state has adopted an only-military approach since and has been successful in killing more than 440 Maoists in the one-and-a-half years since the BJP came to power in Chhattisgarh. The state feels they will only talk to discuss the modalities of mass surrender and the Maoists have also started hinting at that possibility. The spokesperson of the Maoist Central Committee, Abhay, who should be the most important Maoist now, has escaped from Bastar and is sending press notes from an unknown location, also suggesting mass surrender.

The Maoist conflict in Chhattisgarh has always been a 1+99 problem where 1 per cent were outsiders like Nambala Keshav Rao who controlled 99 per cent of the tribal foot soldiers like Soni. In the past 45 years, they could not train a single Chhattisgarhi Adivasi or a woman to lead them in the state which had emerged as their de facto headquarters since the debacles in West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.

That does not leave much room to discuss the future of the Maoists in Chhattisgarh once the outsiders are gone. The image created of people like 바카라�mastermind바카라� Hidma is clever Maoist spin doctoring.

Three things are priorities. One, and most the important, is saving the lives of around 1,000 or less misguided Maoist fighters like Soni. The rehabilitation of victims of this long conflict can be the second priority. And, finally, the course of development in areas that were so far under Maoist control should be thought through. People fear that as soon as Mao-vadis are gone, the 바카라�MoU-vadis바카라� will take over. They refer to the Memoranda of Understanding the government has been signing mainly with the mining companies.

I dread to see the photographs of killed Maoists these days for fear that Soni will be among them. She has managed to escape so far, but for how long? The state says it is like the dacoit surrender situation that JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) had led more than 50 years ago when Chhattisgarh was a part of Madhya Pradesh. Will the new JP please emerge to save these unnecessary deaths? Whether it will be one tall figure or a group of civil society actors acceptable to both sides is immaterial.

Soni must have been a part of many killings as well on the pretext of being informers. The state, after all, has been killing many by calling them Maoists. As per the data given by the government of Chhattisgarh, till last year, the state has killed 1,179 Maoists and the Maoists have killed 1,285 security men since the formation of the state in 2000.

One needs to add around 400 more to the number of Maoists killed since last year. The number which no one discusses is 1,721바카라�the number of villagers killed by Naxals until last year on suspicion of being informers. They have killed around half a dozen in May alone.

Kistaram is now a happening place with autos plying day and night. There are two daily buses바카라�one to the district headquarters Sukma, and another to the border town of Konta. There was a gunfight with Maoists this week around 15-20 km from Kistaram, so all is not well yet. But doctors from security camps also visit the government hospital in Kistaram from time to time. The government was running regular camps to provide Aadhaar cards and other facilities to villagers who had no access to them during the Maoist rule.

The Kistaram weekly market is back in action after many decades. Soni바카라�s sister goes to the market to sell forest produce. Her father is long dead. One of her sisters is a rural health wor­ker now. Another works on agriculture and forest produce collection. They recently told my friend who visited them that Soni never visited after leaving home long back and they hope she will surrender and come home soon. Hope we don바카라�t fail them.

(Views expressed are personal)

This article is part of Outlook Magazine's June 11, 2025 issue, 'Living on the Edge', which explores India바카라�s fragile borderlands and the human cost of conflict. It appeared in print as 'Red Fade.'