Bhubaneswar: First 21 days of year 2025 saw neutralisation of as many as 48 Maoists. The Naxals were inflicted with heavy losses in the Chhattisgarh – the last major bastion of the Maoists.
In the biggest encounter over last 10-years, January encounter saw killing of 18 maoist cadres, including Telangana State Committee cadre Damodar (Damodar alias Chokka Rao). The security forces gained big in Bastar division.
Four days after, on Jan 20, at Kulhadighat, close (around 5km) to Odisha’s (Nuapada) border, security force had launched another big operation killing Central Committee member Jayaram alias Chalapathi carrying a bounty of 1cr over his head, and Manoj (Odisha maoist head and central committee member).
MAOIST ORGANSIATION STRUCTURE
The governing body of the Maoists is known as CPI-Maoist Central Committee. And the committee is now dominated by members hailing from Andhra Pradesh, earlier till 2010, the committee had equal representation from West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.
The apex central committee is stated to currently having around 6 members.
The apex Central Committee is also followed by committees, such as:
- State Committees
- Zonal committees
- District committees
- Division committees
- Squad area committees
And the leaders of State and zonal committees also hold membership of apex Central Committee – as Manoj was holding now.
HOW IS DOMINATION OF SECURITY FORCES?
As per the data available with Union Home Ministry, year 2024 witnessed biggest naxalite casualties in the history of security forces fight with Naxals.
In the last 25 years, following years saw biggest naxal casualties
- 2003 – 246
- 2005 – 282
- 2006 – 343
- 2008 – 228
- 2009 – 314
- 2010 – 265
- 2011 – 210
- 2016 – 250
- 2018 – 230
- 2024 – 296
A glance at the above data shows that the year 2024 witnessed biggest naxal casualties in last 14-years. The domination of security forces have spilled into 2025, as till date in January, 48 maoists killed.
JAN 21 ENCOUNTER
A top SOG, Odisha, official informed that the security forces have a intelligence dominance in the Kulhadighat area.
Based on human inputs, Kulhadighat reserve forest has been on the radar of security forces. On Jan 3, 2025, the forces launched an operation that resulted in neutralization of 1 naxal, many other cadres escaped.
However, on Jan 19-20, backed with solid inputs of a big naxal meeting at Kulhadighat, located 5km away from Odisha’s Nuapada district, SOG odisha and Chhattisgarh police launched a mega joint operation. The operation was declared completed on Jan 21, with security forces declaring neutralizing a high of 16 Naxalites, including 3 big names – Jayaram, who has been the leadng the Srikakulam - Korpaut division, Manoj and Guddu (with 25 lakh reward over his head).
In the joint operation against naxals, a total 10 teams of security forces have launched the encounter. While 5 CRPF teams were part of this joint operation, 3 from SOG Odisha and 2 from Chhattisgarh police were in the joint team.
The neutralization of top-members is seen as a big success for Odisha SOG in its anti-naxal operations.
‘SHADOW INTELLIGENCE’ OF HOME MINISTRY BIG REASON?
Though human intelligence played a big role in fight against naxals, the targeted killing of informers in a big way by the Maoists over the years had affected it in a big way. Here is the list of civilians (police informers) killed by Naxals in the last 10 years.
- 2014 – 127
- 2015 – 90
- 2016 – 122
- 2017 – 107
- 2018 – 108
- 2019 – 99
- 2020 – 61
- 2021 – 58
- 2022 – 53
- 2023 – 61
- 2024 – 80
- 2025 (till Jan 21) – 2
A glance at the above data indicates a big drop in killing of informers by naxals. The big reason has been attributed to Shadow Intelligence strategy deployed by the Union Home Ministry in 2017, when Rajnath Singh was the Union Home Minister.
However, since 2019, the Home Ministry is now under Amit Shah, and following the germination of the new anti-maoist strategy yielded results with a sharp drop in police informant killings over the years.
HOW IT OPERATES?
Shadow intelligence relies on human and technical intelligence in 80:20 proportion. Under this strategy, Intelligence bureau sleuths play a big role.
Under the strategy, the IB has been tasked with forming a dedicated team to track down to Maoists/terrorists, their sympathizers and recruiters.
IB has posted top sleuths in hotbed naxal areas like Bastar and Kulhadigath. This helped the security forces in pin-point zeroing of targets and tracking them all down till they get neutralized.
As a part of the security strategy, top sleuths have been be deployed in Chattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka to track the top-level maoist movements.
The Monday encounter has seen the success story of Shadow Intelligence in the battle against naxals.
