NEW DELHI: Indian commandos shot dead three Maoist rebels Wednesday, police said, including a suspected top commander, less than a month after the insurgent group’s chief was killed.
India is waging an all-out offensive against the last vestiges of the Naxalite rebellion, named after the village in the Himalayan foothills where the Maoist-inspired movement began nearly six decades ago.
In the latest incident, three rebels were killed in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, said Amit Bardar, police chief of Alluri Sitharama Raju district where the operation took place.
Police suspect the dead include Gajarla Ravi, alias Uday, a member of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist’s top decision-making body, and another senior leader, Raavi Venkata Chaitanya, alias Aruna.
“We recovered AK-47s, and as per the formation, we expect it is them,“ said Bardar, as only senior rebels are known to hold such weapons.
The two had fled to the area last winter to escape fierce fighting in neighbouring Chhattisgarh, the police chief said.
More than 12,000 rebels, soldiers, and civilians have died since a handful of villagers first rose up against their feudal lords in 1967.
At its peak in the mid-2000s, the rebellion controlled nearly a third of the country, with an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 fighters.
India has vowed to completely crush the rebellion by early next year.
The crackdown by Indian troops across the so-called “Red Corridor” has killed nearly 500 rebels since the beginning of 2024, according to government data.
The group’s chief, Nambala Keshav Rao, alias Basavaraju, was gunned down in May, along with 26 other guerrillas.
But the security operations have been marred by allegations of extra-judicial killings.
Five of India’s mainstream communist parties wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi this month, calling for an “immediate halt to the extra-judicial killings… in the name of” security operations.
The Maoists have said they are ready for dialogue if the government withdraws security forces and halts the ongoing offensive — an offer the government has rejected.
In their letter, the leftist parties criticised the government for not “pursuing a solution through talks”.
“Instead, they are following an inhuman policy of killings and annihilation,“ they alleged.
