New Delhi: Killed in an encounter by the Andhra Pradesh Greyhounds in the Devipatnam forest, Gajarla Ravi alias Uday was one of four avowed Maoists among his five brothers.
Second among the four brothers to emerge as a member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) central committee, Gajarla Ravi was the last brother who had continued his journey with the party but met his end Wednesday.
Seventeen years ago, his brother, Gajarla Saraiah, known as Azad, met a similar end in April 2008. Another brother surrendered to the police due to bad health. The remaining brother, while living underground as a Maoist, died of poor health.
Gajarla Ravi, deemed the senior-most Maoist leader in the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha border areas, hailed from Jayashankar Bhupalpally district, carved out of the Warangal district in Telangana. Security forces had accused Ravi of hatching an assassination plot against Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in 2003.
Sources in the Andhra Pradesh Police said an exchange of fire started early Wednesday morning in the Devipatnam forest area under the Maredumilli police circle in the Alluri Sitharama Raju district bordering the Malkangiri and Koraput districts in Odisha.
Besides operating as a member of the CPI (Maoist) central committee, which was the top decision-making body of the Maoists, Gajarla Ravi also served as the Andhra-Odisha Border Special Zonal Committee (AOBSZC) secretary.
Along with Ravi, the Greyhounds Wednesday killed senior AOBSZC member Raavi Venkata Chaitanya alias Aruna and the wife of recently slain central committee member Chalapathi, and an area committe member of the AOBSZC identified as Anju.
Early exposure to Maoist ideology
Born to Gajarla Mallaiah and Kanakamma, Gajarla Ravi completed high school at the government school in his village in the Chityala block of the Jayashankar Bhupalpally district in Telangana.
According to sources working with Andhra Pradesh Police, past police records reveal his early association with the Maoist ideology. “He used to put up posters and run errands for Maoists since age seven,” said a source.
Gajarla Ravi got closer to the banned Maoist student outfit, Radical Students Union, during his intermediate education in the Warangal town. One of his brothers witnessed his RSU affinity and sent him to Karimnagar, where Ravi joined a government college. Between 1986 and 1988, Ravi pursued education at the Industrial Training Institute.
That brother, Gajarla Sammaiah, was the only brother who stayed away from the Maoist movement. He worked as a coal filler at the Singareni coal mines in the Mancherial district of the undivided Andhra Pradesh.
Gajarla Ravi, however, was not deterred by the efforts of this elder brother. He joined the RSU as a member and worked with the outfit for a year as his affinity for the People’s War Group (PWG) grew. A year on, he became the secretary of the Radical Youth League (RYL), another frontal Maoist organisation in his local block. At the time, Ravi worked with cousins already associated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (People’s War). Later, he went underground as a member of the dalam, or armed group.
Gajarla Ravi was recruited as a full-timer—a Mahadevapura dalam member—in the 1990s.
Later, he emerged as the deputy commander of the dalam in 1993 and the divisional committee member in the area in 1994. “He continued working in Mahadevapura up to 1999,” a police officer said.
Gajarla Ravi became divisional committee secretary in 2001 before becoming the Karimnagar (East) division secretary, working with the North Telangana Special Zone Committee of the People’s War.
Gajarla Ravi ‘ran out of luck’
Nearly a year after his promotion as the head of Maoist operations, Gajarla Ravi ordered an attack on an Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation bus at Chintagudem in Warangal in November 2022.
The attack left 20 passengers dead and several others injured, with the People’s War Group (PWG) apologising, saying that the attack followed an undertaking communicating that the bus was carrying a police party. “He (Ravi) was demoted from divisional committee secretary-rank to divisional committee member of the PWG,” another police officer said.
However, the Maoists reinstated Gajarla Ravi the year after, and in a subsequent promotional round, he became a member of the state committee in 2004. He was assigned the work of handling the mobile political school (MPoS) of the outfit to strengthen the breeding ground of its ideology after security forces killed six top Maoists in the Tupakulagudem encounter.
Gajarla Ravi was one of three Maoist leaders, besides then-CPI(ML)PW state secretary Akkiraju Hargopal, also known as Ramakrishna (RK), and Sudhakar, to hold peace talks with the Andhra Pradesh government in 2004. The forces killed Sudhakar earlier this month in Bijapur.
The eldest brother, Gajarla Rajaiah alias Possaih, is the one who died of poor health, and the younger brother, Gajarla Ashok alias Aithu, along with his wife, surrendered before the police in 2015.
Sources in Andhra Pradesh Police said the encounter Wednesday was the trap that got him. “His luck finally ran out after at least 12 searches in the past. Greyhounds conducted at least that many encounters, and every time, Gajarla Ravi, the prime target, gave the forces a miss and survived,” a police officer said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)