Bihar too ‘Maoist free’, how the wheel came full circle

The surrender of Koda, who carried a bounty of Rs 3 lakh and was a declared absconder for 25 years, prompted the official announcement declaring Bihar free of organised Maoist violence.

Kundan Krishnan, Director General of Operations and STF, recalls the “massive upsurge” in Maoist violence in Bihar in the early 2000s, following the merger of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the People’s War Group (PWG) to form the CPI (Maoist), which carried out high-profile urban and rural strikes.

These included the assassination of a Patna jailer and the November 2005 Jehanabad jailbreak, where insurgents freed 389 prisoners, and a synchronised assault on the Madhuban block in East Champaran in June 2005, in which nearly two dozen were left dead in attacks on police stations, banks, block offices and homes of local political figures.

The start

DG Krishnan traces the origin of Naxalism in Bihar to the Naxalbari movement of the 1960s in neighbouring West Bengal. Youths enamoured by the movement, like Prashant Bose, crossed over into undivided Bihar to establish a foothold in the Parasnath and Dhanbad regions, and drew others to their side.

“An associate of Bose, a teacher from Ekwari known locally as Master Saab (Jagdish Mahto), expanded their footprint into the Magadh area, setting up the Kuleshwari zone in Chatra district,” the STF chief says.

Simultaneously, the Party Unity faction, led by Dr Vinayan and his Majdur Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (MKSS), became active in rural Patna, Jehanabad and Aurangabad.

In May 1970, Revolutionary Communist Centre (RCC) cadres attacked the Jadugoda police picket in Singhbhum (now in Jharkhand) and looted nine rifles, in one of the earliest recorded Maoist armed actions in the region.

The RCC subsequently merged into the MCC, and the MCC and Party Unity, the armed wing of the MKSS, emerged as the dominant factions. These groups often fought not just the government, but each other and rival factions like the CPI (ML).

But the factions eventually consolidated, with Party Unity merging with Kondapalli Seetharamaiah’s PWG in 1998, before the final 2004 merger that created the modern CPI (Maoist).

DG Krishnan notes a significant demographic shift during this era. “Initially, the MCC consisted mostly of landless labourers from all backgrounds. However, under the influence of Jagdish Mahto, the group’s demographic shifted, leading factions like the Paswans to align with the CPI (ML). Between 1997 and 1999, these groups were constantly at war, systematically destroying each other’s cadres and homes. It was during this conflict that Rajesh Paswan, the father of the Gaya MP, was murdered.”

The infighting largely ceased following the 2004 merger, culminating in the 9th Unity Congress held in early 2007 in Chormara, a remote village in Bihar’s Jamui district.

The change

DK Krishnan says that the tide began to turn when the state recognised that traditional policing could not counter a guerrilla army. “Police were forced to modernise because of this violence. Following the Central government’s recognition of LWE as the greatest internal security threat, creation of the LWE division in the IB and the MHA led to specialised funding flows.”

Bihar established a dedicated STF training centre on 20 acres and raised a specialised force of 2,000 personnel.

The effectiveness of the counter-offensive is reflected by the data. In 2004, Bihar saw 342 incidents of LWE violence, resulting in the death of 218 civilians. Fast forward to 2024 and 2025, the number of incidents dropped to just 13 per year, with zero security force casualties and zero levy money recovered. In 2025 alone, security forces arrested 229 extremists and recovered a massive cache of explosives, detonators, and arms.

Police records indicate a steady depletion of the Maoist leadership coinciding with the period. While 11 extremists were killed in 2001, the number of arrests peaked at 585 in 2015. Since 2005, the Bihar Police have arrested more than 8,500 suspected Maoist cadres and overground workers. In the last five years alone (2020–2025), the Bihar STF and Central agencies have neutralised or arrested 42 top-tier commanders (ranging from Zonal to Central Committee members), effectively decapitating the regional command structure.

As per DG Krishnan, another indicator of the Naxal decline were the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections. “For decades, polling stations in districts like Gaya, Jamui and Rohtas had to be relocated to safe zones due to the threat of landmines and booth capturing. For the first time in years, the Election Commission did not have to relocate a single polling booth due to extremist threats.”

In Chormara, the site of the Maoists’ 2007 Unity Congress, voters cast their ballots at their original stations with a turnout of 41.55%. In the Chakarbandha hills, where 10 CoBRA jawans were killed in a 2016 blast, turnout soared to 79% in stations like Tarchua. In Rohtas, where DFO Sanjay Singh was murdered in 2002, the village of Korhas saw a 74% turnout.