At least two suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight with security personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district on Thursday, PTI reported.
The exchange of fire broke out around 7 am in a forested area in the southern part of the district, when a team of the District Reserve Guard was conducting an anti-Maoist operation following intelligence inputs about the presence of a small group of armed Maoists, The Indian Express reported.
Bijapur Additional Superintendent of Police Chandrakant Governa told PTI that the bodies of two Maoists were recovered during a search operation after the gunfight.
With the latest deaths, at least 22 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.
Between January 16 and January 17, six suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight with security forces in Bijapur.
The Union government told Parliament that 335 “Left-wing extremists” had been killed, while 2,167 others had surrendered in 2025.
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 Ganesh 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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