New Delhi: In another major success in the ongoing anti-Naxal operations, security forces Thursday killed another member of the Central Committee of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) in the national park area of Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district, ThePrint has learnt.
The senior Maoist cadre has been identified as Tentu Laxmi Narsimha Chalam, alias Goutham or Sudhakar (66). The exchange of fire was still underway till Thursday afternoon, but forces recovered his body during a brief search operation.
The overall casualty in the operation is yet to be determined, officials said to ThePrint, requesting anonymity.
Sudhakar, a native of Andhra Pradesh’s Eluru district, was recently promoted as a central committee member and was in-charge of the education department of the banned outfit, show police records. He had joined the Maoist outfit back in 1995 and was also in-charge of its Kranthi magazine in the Central Regional Bureau, a key coordinating body within the CPI-Maoist.
Thursday’s encounter was launched based on verified inputs on the presence of senior Maoist cadres including Sudhakar, one Telangana State Committee member Bandi Prakash, and Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee member Pappa Rao in the national park area, said Bastar Range IG Sundarraj Pattilingam in a statement.
“The inputs indicated the presence of Central Committee member Gautam @Sudhakar, Telangana State Committee member Bandi Prakash, Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee member Pappa Rao, and a few other armed Maoist cadres. Acting on this input, joint troops of STF/ DRG and CoBRA were launched for the search in the area,” he said.
“Preliminary reports suggest a strong possibility of major success for the security forces in the ongoing anti-Naxal operation in the National Park area of Bijapur,” he added.
Sudhakar has become the fourth central committee member of the Maoist to have been eliminated so far this year. This comes just a fortnight after the security forces killed Nambala Keshava Rao, alias Basavaraju, the general secretary and the chief of the CPI (Maoist).
Before Basavaraju was killed in an encounter in the Abujhmad forest by a joint team of District Reserve Guards (DRGs) from Narayanpur, Bijapur, and Dantewada, security forces had also eliminated Chalapathi on the Chhattisgarh–Odisha border in Gariaband district in January.
Another central committee member Prayag Manjhi was killed in April in Jharkhand’s Bokaro district by forces composed of troops from Jharkhand Special Task Force and CRPF.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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