How Madhya Pradesh got ‘the last of its Maoists’: Tracking the one-year push

* In 2024, a Hawk officer was shot in the head by a Naxal sentry. “A splinter remains lodged in his brain,” says Commandant K M Shiyaz. “He has 70% disability, he is paralysed and can’t speak.”

Behind CM Mohan Yadav’s declaration on December 11 that Madhya Pradesh was free of Mao­ists, and far removed from attention focused on its neighbouring states over the CPI (Maoist) menace, lie these stories.

Concentrated in Balaghat, Mandla and Dindori districts, Maoist cadres first came to Madhya Pradesh seeking a safe haven after heat was turned up against them in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. But their acquisition of arms, including AK-47s, and INSAS and SLR rifles stolen from police, and the movement of dreaded commanders to head the men, put them on the government’s radar.

By mid-2024, as anti-Maoist operations picked up pace, the crackdown in Madhya Pradesh also intensified.

SP Aditya Mishra, who headed the command and control centre that was a nerve point for the security agencies, says: “In a race, people only notice the moment someone crosses the finish line; they often miss the hard work that has gone in. We have been working on this for four to five months.”

Under the Madhya Pradesh government’s surrender policy, Maoists can receive rehabilitation packages worth over Rs 35 lakh.

Left-wing network

The first step was strength­ening intelligence gathering and working out the Maoist network in MP. Officials said clues were provided by surrendered veteran Maoists in other states after they were questioned at length.

Tracking mobile phones was not an option as Maoists don’t use them. So drones and UAVs with heat sensors were employ­ed to track movement on the ground, including hideouts in dense forested regions.

Sources say Special DG (Anti-Naxal Operations) Pankaj Srivastava, who came in from the CBI, then sifted through the intelligence, and troop deployment was decided accordingly.

Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh lessons showed that “our operations were not putting sufficient pressure” on the Maoists, he says.

‘Extortion economy’

SP Mishra, who has written a research note on what he calls the “tendu economy” of LWE says they next targeted Maoist finances. Tendu leaves, used to roll bidis, have long been the primary revenue source for Maoists, with cadres known to extort tendu-patta contractors.

“We found records showing collections of roughly Rs 3 crore (at one time),” Mishra says. “By the time we were done, their collections had dropped to less than Rs 11 lakh.”

Payments to tendu contractors were digitised and disbursements merged into Jan-Dhan accounts with e-KYC, making it difficult to siphon off money. Tendu patta movements were also geo tagged.

“For the first time, Naxals from Madhya Pradesh couldn’t collect levy during the tendu patta season, they only managed small collections from Maharashtra border areas,” says DG Srivastava. Maoists would also extort money from road contractors in Balaghat. As a result many projects remained abandoned. This year, government push ensured that roads finally made their way into the last Red bastion in Madhya Pradesh.

Striking at the roots

The agencies also went after the Maoist support structure, focusing on 70-odd villages and investigating 143 people for alleged links, police say.

Officials held meetings with residents of these villages, and told them the Maoists were depriving them of roads and schools, helping break Maoist narrative that they were “protectors of tribal communities” against “an exploitative State”.

Senior officers lived in villages for three months at a stretch, holding panchayat meetings and interacting with villagers. “Oath-taking” ceremonies were held where tribals signed documents renouncing support for insurgents.

Public fury over extortion became a weapon against the insurgency, officials say.

Says Mishra: “Villagers began to openly reject extortion.”

Last push

Last month, the Hawk force lost an officer, and intensified its operations. According to a senior officer with the force, the end of Maoist presence in the state after this was “swift”, with the movement crumbling as supply lines and funds dried up.

A big blow to the Reds was the surrender of Sunita on November 1, which led officials to intelligence that a new group headed by well-known commander Ramdher was operating in Balaghat.

They got a tip-off that on December 13, Maoists from Balagahat would hold their annual meeting, with divisions headed by Kabir and Ramdher deciding a fresh list of assassination targets, extortion and recruitment drives. Instead, they surrendered.

A senior officer who was a part of these final raids says: “The operation lasted nine days and involved about 1,200 personnel. Ramdher was caught in an exchange of fire with us before he surrendered in Chhattisgarh.” On December 11, two cadres—declared the final Maoists in Madhya Pradesh—followed, laying down their arms, desperately looking for food and medicines. Officials say they were headed to a Maoist meeting when they decided to surrender.

A local government official says that “micro-development plans” for villages where Maoists were active will follow.