Top Maoist Commander with ₹1 Crore Bounty Killed in Jharkhand Encounter

In a major victory for security forces in eastern India, a top Maoist commander carrying a ₹1 crore bounty on his head was killed along with two other senior rebels in a fierce gun battle in Jharkhand's Hazaribagh district. The slain commander, Sahdeo Soren, was a Central Committee member of the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) and was one of the region's most wanted insurgent leaders. The successful operation represents a significant blow to the Maoist movement's leadership and operational capabilities in the state.

The meticulously planned operation was launched in the early hours of Monday morning based on specific intelligence inputs. A joint team, comprising the elite CoBRA battalion along with police units from Hazaribagh and Giridih, zeroed in on the rebels' location in Karandi village, near the Giridih-Bokaro border. The gunfight erupted at approximately 6 am as the security forces closed in, resulting in the deaths of the three high-value targets.

Alongside Soren, the security forces also eliminated two other key figures in the Maoist hierarchy. Raghunath Hembram, also known as Chanchal, was a Bihar-Jharkhand Special Area Committee member and had a reward of ₹25 lakh for his capture. The third slain rebel, Birsen Ganjhu, alias Ramkhelawan, was a zonal committee member with a bounty of ₹10 lakh.

Following the encounter, security forces recovered the bodies of the three insurgents. Officials have stated that a comprehensive search operation is still underway in the surrounding forested region to track down any other potential collaborators or hidden caches of weapons. This successful, intelligence-driven strike is a major morale booster for the security forces and a critical setback for the Maoist insurgency in the strategic Jharkhand-Bihar corridor.