New Delhi: Back in April 2010, troops of the 62 battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Chhattisgarh Police embarked on a three-day operation following an “input” about the movement of Maoists in Mukrana forest, located between Sukma and Dantewada districts of Chhattisgarh.
The operation did not yield any result and they were returning to their base camp in Chintalnar early morning on 6 April when, around 4 km from the camp, the armoured personnel carrier was blown up by an improvised explosive device (IED).
A group of 40-50 troops were surrounded by Maoists who had occupied hilltops surrounding the exit route with sophisticated weapons. The troops rushed to take shelter behind trees, only to find that they were laden with IEDs and were blown up. The personnel who could not move from the open area were shot dead.
The routes and planning of troop movement was so compromised that even the vehicle sent to pick the bodies of the slain personnel exploded. As many as 76 security personnel were massacred. The Maoists also looted arms and ammunition from the entire patrolling party.
The magnitude of the attack and the death toll alarmed the then United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by the late Manmohan Singh.
It was in the wake of the Tadmetla massacre that the name ‘Madvi Hidma’ was taken only in whispers, and linked to the Maoist movement in the country.
Every violent attack, including a near-repeat in 2021 in the same region (an ambush that left 22 security personnel dead), had the stamp of Hidma, directly or indirectly, according to security officials privy to affairs at the time.
Singh had called the Maoists “the biggest” challenge to India’s internal security then.
As security forces across states such as Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Telangana stepped up operations and policies to either kill or cause the surrender of top Maoist cadres, one question always lurked: Where is Hidma and how long before security forces get him?
Hidma, along with his wife Raje and four other Maoist cadres, was killed in an encounter Tuesday morning in the dense Maredumilli forests along the Chhattisgarh-Andhra Pradesh border.
Hidma’s body was brought to his ancestral village, Puvarti in Sukma, Thursday where his mother Madavi Pojje and neighbours had nothing but profuse tears to welcome him home.
Speaking to ThePrint, a source in the Chhattisgarh Police said: “Hidma was a bigger figure in the Maoist chain of command in a military sense. Hidma, combined with (slain general secretary) Basavaraju, proved deadly for security forces. They always believed in armed rebellion more than the political struggle and were always in pursuit of goals such as harming the state through violent means.”
Rise of Madvi Hidma
Facing stern pressure from a crackdown launched by the Andhra Pradesh government in the 1980s, the People’s War Group (PWG) began moving to the Dandakaranya region, then including parts of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha.
The PWG unified with the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) in 2004 to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist), banned in India.
Among the first commanders incorporated by the PWG was Ramesh Badranna from Pamed village in Bijapur, located deep inside the forest, far from the presence of troops at that time.
It was Badranna who brought Hidma into the Maoist fold in 1991, when Hidma was just 16. Educated only till Class 5, Hidma could hardly speak or understand anything beyond the local dialect, Gondi, according to police records. However, he taught himself various languages and also became proficient in English during his tenure with the party.
Police records indicate that Hidma had an immediate ring of 12 Maoist cadres and was on close terms with every cadre in his battalion.
Hidma was in 1991 appointed as member of Bal Sangathan, a Maoist frontal organisation focused on identifying and inducting young children into the party. Having received training in fieldcraft and guerrilla warfare, he was first sent to the Balaghat region in Madhya Pradesh in 2002. He was quickly promoted and became secretary of the Konta Area Committee, active in his home turf in Sukma.
By 2007, he was promoted to the rank of commander of Company 3 in the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), the armed wing of the Maoists. By 2009, he had risen through the ranks and become a deputy commander of a PLGA battalion.
In 2000, Badranna surrendered to the authorities along with his wife. However, he still has memories of Hidma’s induction into the Maoist outfit.
“I was a local commander there, and I was tasked to recruit young men from the Bastar region, and I spotted him as he was a lean, tall and smart young man compared to others,” Badranna told ThePrint, adding that Hidma always said yes to the party’s work.
According to Badranna, Hidma was inducted into the child wing and, based on his willpower and eagerness, rose through the ranks. He also said Hidma was turned into a figure larger than he was and that many others like him had joined the Maoist ranks only because of the prevailing situation for tribals in Chhattisgarh and, before that, in Madhya Pradesh.
Deva, Vilas & Hidma
Hidma was known by various aliases given to him by the Maoist organisation and its cadres. He was named Madvi Deva by his family, but in Balaghat, where he became a Maoist military leader, he was known as Vilas.
“The Maoist outfit had (also) given him the name Hidma,” states the police dossier, accessed by ThePrint.
He married Raje, earlier a divisional committee member of the Maoists who, at the time of Tuesday’s encounter, was believed to head the Mobile Political School (MOPOS) of the rebels, through which they imparted ideological training to their cadres.
Soon after he was elevated as secretary of Konta Area Committee, Hidma conspired to carry out an IED explosion in Chhattisgarh’s Injeram in 2005, leaving six security personnel dead, according to the dossier.
Over the next five years, Hidma oversaw several ambushes and attacks on security forces in the Bastar region. He was said to be the principal planner behind the twin attacks on the public returning from a Salwa Judum rally in Darbhaguda and Manikonta villages of Dantewada district in 2006. At least 30 civilians were killed in the two attacks.
Salwa Judum was a movement of the tribal population against the Maoist outfit and its cadres, supported by the state government. The Supreme Court in 2011 termed the movement unconstitutional and ordered the state to disband the group.
Over the next four years, Hidma was allegedly found involved in at least eight attacks that left around 106 civilians and security personnel dead.
The Tadmetla ambush in 2010 was the worst attack faced by security forces at the hands of Hidma in Bastar. He was made commander of Battalion 1 of the PLGA—the most deadly Maoist battalion.
After gaining notoriety among security forces and receiving recognition from the top Maoist cadres, Hidma was elevated to the Maoists’ top decision-making body—the central committee — in 2023. He remained the only tribal from Chhattisgarh to be inducted into the central committee.
Over time, Hidma also gained prominence within the Maoist leadership and began overseeing the outfit’s financial affairs. As part of his responsibilities, he used to convene bi-annual meetings of the Battalion Party Committee of the Maoists, according to the dossier.
Sources in the intelligence department of the state police said “there was hardly any major ambush attack against forces in the Chhattisgarh region that Hidma was not part of”.
For some officials, therefore, Hidma’s killing in an encounter is more significant than that of Basavaraju, as with Hidma still at large, a big Maoist attack was always feared.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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