New Delhi: Thirteen years ago, the might of the Chhattisgarh state was challenged on an April afternoon. A group of 30-40 Maoist cadres overran the then Sukma District Collector Alex Paul Menon’s security detail, killed his gunmen and abducted him at gunpoint to deep pockets of forests in Bastar region. Though the now slain Maoist commander Madvi Hidma’s name came up in the daring abduction, his confidant Barsa Deva was the man who executed the operation on the ground.
On Saturday, Deva along with 18 other underground cadres surrendered before Telangana Director General of Police (DGP) B. Shivadhar Reddy, who hailed it as a tipping point in ending the violent Maoist movement in the country.
“The surrender of Deva has virtually eliminated the entire People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army, the military wing of the CPI (Maoist). Similarly, the surrender of Kankanala Raji Reddy alias Venkatesh, from the outfit’s Telangana state committee has pushed it to the brink of collapse with only one member remaining,” Reddy said at a press conference.
The development comes ahead of the 31 March, 2026 deadline set by Union Home Minister Amit Shah to eradicate Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) in the country.
Like the most-wanted Hidma, Deva hails from Puvarti village of south Sukma. Hidma, his wife and four others were gunned down on 18 November last year. Menon, meanwhile, lived to see both Hidma’s end and Deva’s surrender, as he was released in May 2012 following intense negotiations.
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The rise of Barsa Deva
Much of Sukma’s face has changed in the last decade, with mobile towers, unmetalled roads, and water connections reaching far-off villages, and so have the political realities on the ground.
A measure of it was apparent when Chhattisgarh Home Minister Vijay Sharma visited Puvarti in November last year and had lunch with villagers. Senior officials, including Inspector General of Police Sundarraj Pattilingam, Sukma Superintendent of Police Kiran Chavan and District Collector Amit Kumar, accompanied him in his entourage.
With folded hands, Sharma requested Punji Madvi and Barsa Singe, the mothers of Hidma and Deva, urging them to request their sons to lay down weapons, a photo of which was widely shared on social media.
A week later, Hidma and his wife lay dead in the Maredumilli forest area of Andhra Pradesh’s Alluri Sitharama Raju district. After his mentor was killed, Deva was reportedly approached by intelligence officials through informal channels. Sharma issued another statement, urging Deva to surrender and opt for rehabilitation, which ultimately occurred Friday before the Telangana Police.
Police records trace Deva’s entry into the banned outfit back to 2003, when he was inducted into the Pamed Area committee. He consistently got promotions and served in the Konta Area committee when Hidma was secretary and headed the outfit in their home turf in Sukma.
By 2008, he was promoted from an area committee member to a divisional committee member. His rise was parallel with Hidma, who was promoted to the commander of People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) Company 3 and later the deputy commander of a battalion by 2009.
According to police records, Deva served as the military commander-in-chief in the South Bastar division, which includes Sukma, Bijapur, and parts of Dantewada from 2008 to 2020.
“Even before his elevation as commander of the PLGA Battalion 1 in South Bastar, Deva and Hidma have always worked together in close coordination. They trusted each other to the hilt,” a source familiar with their trajectory told ThePrint.
“Hidma, who was more of a man leading from the front, was guided and helped by Deva for years and in planning several ambushes during their heydays. Deva was the quiet strategist behind the daring operations, which were publicly attributed to Hidma. Both of them had similar tribal instincts and fighting attitude,” the source explained.
“He has always been Hidma’s confidant and his backbone. The magnitude of the arms surrendered by Deva and the cadres shows that he has been a military man. With his surrender, the military wing of the Maoists is absolutely wiped out.”
The cache of 48 weapons included two light machine guns, an Israel-made Tavor rifle, a US-made Colt rifle, 10 INSAS rifles, 8 AK-47 rifles and self-loading rifles each, four barrel grenade launchers, among others.
It was Deva who decided that the Maoist brass take shelter at the Karreguttalu Hills, spanning between Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur and Sukma districts and Mulugu and Bhadradri Kothagudem districts in Telangana, to evade pressure from forces, the sources said.
Series of ambushes
The sources familiar with Deva’s trajectory said that he coordinated nearly all ambushes carried out against security forces in Bastar between 2007 and 2024. That included the deadly ambushes in 2010 and 2021 that killed 76 and 22 personnel, respectively.
He also planned the bus explosion at Chingavaram on the Dantewada-Sukma road just a month after an ambush on forces, in May 2010, that left 35, including 19 security forces, dead, they added.
Deva, according to the sources, planned the 2013 Darbha valley ambush that wiped out nearly the entire Congress leadership in Chhattisgarh.
In April 2017, he laid another deadly ambush in Sukma’s Burkapal-Chintagufa area in which nearly 300 Maoist cadres encircled 90 troops of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). The central armed police force lost 25 men in the gunfight.
Intelligence and police sources attribute Deva’s high-stakes ambushes to his proximity to the members of the Central Committee, the top decision-making body of the banned outfit.
“Such was the reliance on Deva for military tactics that Muppala Lakshmana Rao had been keeping him in his security detail during his movement in South Bastar,” a police officer told ThePrint.
Known by his nom de guerre ‘Ganapathy’, Rao was the outfit’s general secretary for nearly 14 years until his resignation in November 2018.
Deva, the police records show, was elevated to commander of Battalion 1 of the PLGA in 2024, after Hidma was promoted to the central committee. “After his elevation, he devised a strategy to divide PLGA into fragments to avoid large-scale loss in anti-Naxal operations. While it made the outfit thinner at one location, he believed the movement would survive if the PLGA survived the wave of operations underway across all states. He has been a quiet strategist for a number of years,” the officer added.
Bastar Inspector General Sundarraj Pattlingam termed Deva’s surrender as a “powerful validation” of the sustained and decisive anti-Maoist operations underway in Bastar.
“Maoist cadres are being left with no viable option other than to abandon the path of violence and return to the mainstream of society in the face of continuous operational pressure and loss of support base,” he said in a statement.
Security forces remain unwavering in the mission to completely eradicate LWE from Bastar, he said, adding that the rapid erosion of the Maoist cadre base strengthens the collective resolve to ensure lasting peace, inclusive development, and enduring security for the people there.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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