In a major breakthrough in the fight against Left Wing Extremism, security forces have gunned down top Maoist leader Nambala Keshav Rao, popularly known as Basava Raju. He is one of the 28 Maoists killed along the Narayanpur-Bijapur border in Chhattisgarh. He was the most wanted man with a reward of over Rs 1 crore.
The development comes after an encounter broke out between security forces and Naxals in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district on Wednesday, a police official said. In a major success for Indian security forces, Basavaraju, the General Secretary of the CPI (Maoist) and one of the country’s most wanted insurgents, was also killed in the encounter, as per the government sources.
According to sources, the operation by the District Reserve Guard (DRG) from four districts of Narayanpur, Dantewada, Bijapur and Kondagaon was undertaken based on information that a senior Maoist leader was hiding in a specific area in Abujhmad.
Basava Raju succeeded Ganapathy as CPI (Maoist) general secretary in 2018. Ganapathy or Muppala Lakshman Rao was the first general secretary after the People’s War and MCC merged in 2004 to form the CPI (Maoist). He is believed to have fled to the Philippines.
He graduated from REC Warangal, is around 70. He is best known for leading the attacks in which Maoist killed 76 CRPF personnel at Chintalnar, and for ambushing a Congress convoy at Jhiram Ghati in which state party leaders were stabbed and gunned down.
He hails from Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh and was attracted to the CPI(ML) People’s War Group from an early age. He eventually joined it in the early 1980s. He was known to be one of the most academically accomplished Naxal leaders, with a B.Tech degree from the National Institute of Technology, Warangal.
Basava Raju was heading the CPI (Maoist) Military Commission when, in November 2018, he was asked to take over as the General Secretary after the resignation of Ganapathy. He is known to have hobnobbed with other guerrilla movements like the LTTE and worked extensively in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.
He was also known as an explosives expert who prepared deadly IEDs used to ambush security forces, and The killing of Araku Telugu Desam Party MLA Kidari Sarveswara Rao and ex-MLA Siveri Soma on September 23, 2018, by the Maoists is attributed to a plan set in motion by Basvaraj.