Security forces eliminate Bala Krishna, 6th Maoist central committee member killed this year

Also known by his aliases Bhaskar and Manoj, Bala Krishna was among 10 Maoist cadres killed in encounter with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Gariaband district Thursday.

Representational image | File photos of Bala Krishna and security forces returning after an encounter with Maoists in Gariaband | ANI

New Delhi: Striking yet another blow to the organisational strength of the banned outfit Communist Party of India (Maoist), security forces in Chhattisgarh have eliminated another member of its central committee, Modem Bala Krishna. Gariaband Superintendent of Police (SP) Nikhil Rakhecha said Thursday that the bodies of 10 Maoist cadres, including Bhaskar’s, were recovered after an encounter with security forces.

Also known by his aliases Bhaskar and Manoj, Bala Krishna is the sixth member of the CPI (Maoist) central committee, the banned outfit’s top decision-making body, to have been eliminated so far this year. Others included general secretary Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju, who was eliminated by Chhattisgarh’s District Reserve Guard (DRG) in May.

Bala Krishna’s death comes at a time when Maoist cadres are fragmented and dislocated after a series of encounters with security forces in Chhattisgarh, as well as in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana.

Raipur range Inspector General of Police (IG), Amresh Mishra, told ThePrint that an intensive operation was launched based on intelligence inputs about Bala Krishna’s presence in forests of Gariaband district. “A team of Elite 30, along with the Special Task Force of the police and CoBRA of the CRPF, was carrying out the encounter,” he said.

Originally from Telangana’s Warangal district, Bala Krishna joined the banned outfit in 1983 and rose through the ranks to become secretary of the Odisha state committee. He also functioned as secretary of the Andhra Odisha Border Special Zonal Committee (AOBSZC), a position held earlier by another central committee member, Chalapathi.

Sources in the Chhattisgarh Police said Bala Krishna was killed in the same area, around four to five km from the site where Chalapathi was killed in an encounter with security forces in January. The densely forested area between Gariaband in Chhattisgarh and the Nuapada district in Odisha was earlier controlled by the Kandhamal-Kalahandi-Boudh-Nayagarh (KKBN) division of the CPI (Maoist).

Police records show Bala Krishna studied till the intermediate level at the Junior College in Hyderabad’s Malakpet before joining the banned outfit.

He had escaped an encounter with security forces, which included jawans of the Special Operations Group (SOG), in February 2016, in Odisha’s Koraput.

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)