Hyderabad:
Two top leaders of the Maoists in Andhra Pradesh have been killed by the state police. One of them has been identified as C Rajakumar alias Azad. The man found with him remains unidentified so far.
Because of Azad's seniority- he was believed to be the most powerful man in the CPI (Maoist) after party supremo Ganapathy - security forces are gearing up for retaliatory attacks by the Maoists. The five states struggling with Maoists - Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Orissa- have been alerted to this possibility.
The possibility of counter-attacks is also expected to affect the by-elections for 12 assembly seats in the Telangana region, scheduled for July 27. Candidates may have to be more cautious about the areas where they attempt to campaign.
Azad, a member of the CPI (Maoists) politburo, as also a spokesperson for the insurgents, spent 20 years leading the insurgency. The Andhra police had offered 12 lakhs as a reward for information that could help locate him.
Azad was finally tracked down on Thursday night to the Jogapur forests on the Andhra-Maharashtra border. `` Maoists started firing at the police and we retaliated. This went on till 2 am. If we look at the firing, there must have been some 20-25 Maoists. After firing stopped in the morning, when we came here, we recovered two bodies," said "Shashidhar Raju, a senior police officer who was involved with the encounter.
Maoist sympathiser Varavara Rao and Azad's mother Karuna have filed a petition in the Andhra High court that alleges that Azad was arrested in Nagpur on Thursday morning and killed in a fake police encounter in the Jogapur forest. Eyewitnesses at the site where Azad's body was found told NDTV that he was dressed in civilian casuals, and there were no injury marks on his face.
Azad was allegedly involved in the killing of Congress MLA Narsi Reddy in Andhra, along with nine others, on Independence Day in 2005 - that led to the re-imposition of the ban on the Maoists in Andhra. Talks with the Maoists had broken down a few months before that - the Congress' YSR Reddy was then the Chief Minister of the state.
Andhra first imposed a ban on Maoists in 1992. This was later relaxed by NT Rama Rao, then re-imposed by Chandrababu Naidu in 1996. It was relaxed again by YSR Reddy in 2004. But talks broke down in early 2005, and the ban kicked in again after Narsi Reddy and nine others were gunned down in Narayanpet on August 15 that year.
Just a few weeks ago, Azad and Swami Agnivesh exchanged letters to discuss the possibility of peace talks with the Centre. Azad's killing suggests that option will close, and that the government may persist with the strategy of going after the Naxals' senior-most men to create a leadership vacuum.