Six suspected Maoists were killed between Saturday and Sunday in a gunfight with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, PTI quoted the police as saying.
While two of the suspected Maoists were killed on Sunday morning, four others were shot dead on Saturday in the forested hills of the district’s northwestern region, Bijapur Superintendent of Police Jitendra Yadav was quoted as saying.
Those who were killed on Sunday were active members of the National Park Area Committee of the Maoists, said Yadav.
They were identified as Dilip Vedja, a divisional committee member of the committee, and Madvi Kosa, Lakkhi Madkam and Radha Metta.
The identities of those killed on Sunday are yet to be established, the police said.
A joint of the Special Task Force, the District Reserve Guard, and the Central Reserve Police Force’s Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, or the CoBRA unit, has been carrying out a search operation in the district based on intelligence inputs about the presence of Vedja and other armed Maoists, PTI reported.
Security forces have recovered six weapons from the site of the gunfight, including an Avtomat Kalashnikova-47 rifle, an Indian Small Arms System rifle, a carbine and a .303 rifle.
Search operations continued in the region on Monday, with security officials searching for Papa Rao, a senior Maoist leader believed to be operating in the Bastar region, The Indian Express reported.
Rao is a member of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee, the highest state-level body of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), and serves as secretary of the South Bastar Zonal Bureau Committee as well as in charge of the West Bastar Division Committee.
On Saturday, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishn Deo Sai said the killing of the suspected Maoists was a “decisive blow to Naxalism”.
“The message of our government is clear – abandon violence, connect with the mainstream of development,” Sai said on social media. “The government is fully committed to rehabilitation with justice, security and dignity.”
With the latest deaths, at least 20 suspected Maoists have been killed in separate gunfights in Chhattisgarh so far this year, PTI reported.
On January 3, 14 suspected Maoists were killed in two separate gunfights with security forces in the state’s Sukma and Bijapur districts.
On January 15, 54 Maoists surrendered before security forces in Bijapur. Forty-nine of them carried a cumulative bounty of Rs 1.4 crore.
On December 16, the Union government told Parliament that 335 “Left-wing extremists” had been killed, while 2,167 others had surrendered in 2025. Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai told the Lok Sabha that 942 Left-wing extremists had been arrested this year.
Overall, 1,841 such persons had been killed, over 16,000 had been arrested, while 9,588 others had surrendered since 2014.
The Union government has vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026.
In October, the Union home ministry said that the number of districts across states affected by “Left-wing extremism” has come down to 11 from 18 in March.
In 2025, the number of “most affected” districts came down from six to three, it added. These are Bijapur, Sukma and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh.
In the course of the Union government’s anti-Maoist offensive in 2025, key Maoist leaders like Uike and Madvi Hidma have been killed, while others like Vikas Nagpure, alias Anant, and Mallojula Venugopal Rao, alias Bhupathi, have surrendered.
A report by Malini Subramaniam for Scroll on Hidma’s killing noted that in the Andhra Pradesh village closest to where he was killed, no one heard gunfire.
She had earlier reported that while many of those killed in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region in 2024 were declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.
Civil liberties groups and Opposition parties have also questioned some of these killings, alleging that they constitute “fake encounters”.
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