In Andhra village closest to where Maoist commander Hidma was killed, no one heard gunfire

Maredumilli is a bustling eco-tourism hub in the Alluri Sitarama Raju district of Andhra Pradesh.

In late November, SUVs from nearby cities threaded along its scenic roads. Eco-cottages overflowed with visitors. Young people snapped selfies near the Pamuleru canal that runs along the hills.

Others paused at smoke-filled kitchenettes to sample bamboo chicken, a specialty of the local Adivasi community, unaware that just days ago the police had gunned down top Maoist commander Madvi Hidma in a nearby forest.

Hidma, 51, was the youngest and only Adivasi member of the central committee of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), which has been mounting a low-intensity insurgency in the forests of central and eastern India for decades.

For the Maoists, Hidma, born in Puwarti village in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, was a son of the soil who had risen through the ranks to become the commander of their most important military unit.

For Chhattisgarh police, he was one of their most wanted insurgents – a man who had led 16 major attacks in the state, including the 2010 ambush in which 76 paramilitary jawans lost their lives. According to them, Hidma was responsible for the deaths of 300 security personnel.

Eventually, however, it was the police of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh that got to him.

On November 18, Andhra Pradesh police announced that it had killed Hidma and five other Maoists in an exchange of fire in the forests near Kondavada village in Maredumilli mandal.

A statement released by the CPI (Maoist) on November 20, signed by its central committee spokesperson who uses the nom de guerre Abhay, claimed that the police had detained Hidma on November 15 in Vijayawada, where he had gone to seek medical treatment. Vijayawada is more than 230 km from Maredumilli block.

Scroll travelled to Maredumilli in late November. After a bumpy ride down Chhattisgarh’s highways, a 66-km stretch from the interstate border town of Konta brought us to Kondavada village.

Most of the residents of the small Adivasi village were out at work when we reached around 11 in the morning. Among the women present and busy with household chores, one spoke up to say they had not heard any gunfire on November 18.

Kondavada is part of the Pamuleru gram panchayat. The sarpanch of Pamuleru, Rama Devi, a young, confident Adivasi woman in her early 30s, told us she had come to know about the killings only from the news.

She said that she received a call from the deputy superintendent of police two days later. He had asked her about the number of households in Kondavada and whether the village had BSNL connectivity, but made no mention of the November 18 encounter, she said.

The sarpanch denied the possibility of local residents sheltering or supplying provisions to the insurgents. She said there had been no presence of the Maoists in the area for decades.

The police superintendent of the district, Amit Badar, maintained that the November 18 gunfight had happened close to Kondavada, and had concluded with the death of Hidma and five other Maoists.

The police statement noted that another gunfight had followed on November 19, also in the Maredumilli block, resulting in the death of another seven Maoists.

The police reported no casualties or injuries in either of the incidents.

The encounters in Maredumilli are part of the Modi government’s anti-Maoist offensive that aims to wipe out the insurgency before March 31, 2026. A statement released by the Union Home Ministry three days before Hidma’s killing put the number of Maoists killed this year at 312.

Civil liberties groups and Opposition parties have questioned some of these killings, alleging that they constitute “fake encounters”.

The encounter site

In Maredumilli block, local journalists said they had been unable to visit the spot where Hidma and others were gunned down. They added that the police had not allowed them to view the bodies either, when they were brought to Rampachodavaram government hospital for postmortem.

A reporter pointed out that the police initially claimed the site was close to Uttaluru village, but later said it was near Kondavada. Scroll reviewed two press statements from the police which bear this out.

Police superintendent Amit Badar brushed this aside as “initial confusion over the gram panchayat”, confirming that the encounter site was close to Kondavada.

A person, who is professionally associated with the police, offered to take us to the spot on the condition of anonymity. He said he had visited the spot with the police, days after the encounter, as part of his official duties.

About 7 km from the Maredumilli block headquarters, a gentle climb up a narrow path, flanked by teak plantations on both sides, led us to a cleared-up patch of forest land. It was here that the police claimed to have exchanged fire with the Maoists, the person said.

Barring a few bullet marks on a tree trunk, there were no visible signs of the gunfight that had reportedly taken place two weeks ago. The person, however, pointed to the tree under which he had seen a large spot of blood when he had initially visited the spot. He said the police had told him this is where Hidma was killed.

He pointed to other trees close by where he said he had seen blood marks, albeit much smaller.

Strewn on the ground, he said, he had seen less than 50 empty bullet shells which appeared to be from the same weapons.

The person added that the forest was dry when he had visited. It had rained the day we reached. A few tomatoes and brinjals lay on the wet forest floor. They had been there when he had first visited, the person said. But apart from them, he added that he had seen no other food provisions or utensils to indicate that the Maoists had camped in the area.

Kondavada village lies about three and a half kilometers from the spot. It is one of six villages part of the Pamuleru gram panchayat.

The sarpanch of Pamuleru, Rama Devi, expressed surprise at the recent events – particularly when told by Scroll that the police claimed the encounter had happened near Kondavada.

She said Kondavada had 134 residents, almost all of whom belonged to the Konda Reddy community, listed as a particularly vulnerable tribal group. They farmed small patches of land and collected forest produce, apart from working as seasonal labourers in nearby towns and cities.

The sarpanch added that she had relatives in Kondavada, and had there been any unusual activity in the forest, they would have reported it to her.

The second site

According to the police, the security operation did not cease with Hidma’s death – more gunfire was exchanged the next day in the forest near GM Valasa village, killing seven.

We visited the village four days after the encounter, with the help of local workers of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and members of the Adivasi Girijana Sangham.

Residents of GM Valasa, who spoke on condition of anonymity, recounted hearing gunfire between 4 am and 7 am on November 19, as some of them made their way to tap rubber at their plantations. A young man part of the group said the sound of gunfire frightened him and he rushed back home.

Kishore, a local resident whose real name is being withheld on request, said he was at home when he heard gunfire around 5 am. As he stepped out of his home, he saw a large group of security personnel. An officer, in civil dress, asked for his phone – perhaps because it had a BSNL SIM card, which has better connectivity in the area.

Kishore said he overheard the officer deliver a cryptic message: “Target finished”. The officer deleted the number he had called before he handed back the device.

Around 1 pm, local residents recalled, a vehicle arrived, and several bodies were swiftly loaded onto it. A few media personnel arrived and took video footage before leaving. Kishore said he had also recorded some videos on his phone, but the police insisted that he delete them. He showed us one blurred image in his phone which he managed to save.

Initially, the police had barred local residents from accessing the forest where the gunfire had taken place. But four days later, when we visited, two young residents led us past shallow water streams and rubber plantations to a relatively open patch of wooded land about 2 km away.

Several police personnel in civilian clothes, including the station house officer of Maredumilli Police, were present at the spot. The officer declined to speak to us before heading out on his motorcycle.

Unlike the site near Kondavada, the forest floor here, strewn with dry leaves, had visible patches of what villagers described as dried blood. Several tree trunks bore bullet marks. Some even displayed large smears of blood, with single streaks running down as if from close-range gunfire.

‘Fear and restlessness’

Back in the village, home to about 150 families, almost entirely Adivasi, we asked locals whether the Maoists had been in the forest for an extended period or had sought food, water, or other necessities from them – everyone shook their heads.

Several elders recalled an older Maoist influence dating back to the 2000s not just in Maredumilli but also in other parts of East Godavari, the larger district from which Alluri Sitarama Raju district was carved out three years ago. “But that is history now,” said K Survana Raju, a 70-year-old Maredumilli block councillor. Over the last 15 years, the Maoists had disappeared from the area, he said.

He said there was no possibility of the Maoist cadres getting local support since the Adivasis in Maredumilli were not in favour of an armed struggle. On the recent encounters, he added: “These incidents are created to instill fear and restlessness among the community.”

The district police superintendent dismissed such claims. “Maoists have their own underground network that may not be apparent, and it would be misleading to state there is no support for them,” Amit Badar said.

On the day that Hidma was killed, Andhra Pradesh police claimed to have arrested about 50 Maoist cadres from the state. However, no arrests have been reported from the villages close to the encounter sites. Both the sarpanch of Pamuleru and the block councillor of Maredumilli told Scroll that no one from the area had been detained or called in for questioning by the police.

Until June 2021, the Ministry of Home Affairs counted five districts in Andhra Pradesh as “left-wing extremism affected” – a term used to indicate Maoist presence in an area. This included East Godavari, West Godavari, Srikakulam, Vizianagram and Vishakhapatnam.

In 2022, a new district was created by merging mandals or blocks from the Rampachodavaram division of East Godavari district with mandals from the Paderu division of Vishakhapatnam.

This new district is called the Alluri Sitarama Raju district. By December 2024, it was the only Andhra Pradesh district left on the home ministry’s list of LWE-affected districts.

In November 2025, the home ministry claimed further success in shrinking the Maoist footprint. “The number of districts most affected by Naxalism have been brought down to three,” it said, identifying them as Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.

Grief and anger in Puwarti

In Puwarti village in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district, where Hidma was born, local residents said the police forced them to conduct his funeral in haste.

“We Adivasis traditionally hold funerals at sunset, but the family was pressured to conduct it around noon,” said Adivasi leader Soni Sori, who was present at the funeral. “Many relatives and well-wishers from nearby villages could not attend.”

Local media reported that the police wanted to prevent a large funeral gathering.

Soni said Hidma had attained a heroic stature among local Adivasis. They saw him as “someone who fought with his life to protect their land, water, and forest,” she said.

Many residents of interior villages in Sukma and Bijapur were in shock at Hidma’s killing. They pointed out that the deputy chief minister of Chhattisgarh, Vijay Sharma, had recently visited Puwarti village to meet Hidma’s family as well as that of his close associate Barse Dewa. Sharma had urged Hidma and Dewa’s mothers to appeal to their sons to lay down arms and return to the mainstream.

A week later, the Maoist leader was killed in Andhra Pradesh.