10 Naxalites carrying Rs 38 lakh bounty among 18 surrender in Chhattisgarh

Days after Operation Black Forest and the Abujhmad encounter, where top Naxal commander Nambala Keshava Rao was killed, 18 Naxalites on Tuesday surrendered before the security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district.

The state police said of these, 10 carried a cumulative bounty of Rs 38 lakh. The cadres turned themselves in before the senior police and the CRPF officials, citing disappointment with “hollow” and “inhuman” Maoist ideology and atrocities by militants on local tribals, Sukma SP Kiran Chavan said during a media interaction.

They said they were also impressed by the state government’s ‘Niyad Nellanar’ (‘Your Good Village’) initiative, which is aimed at facilitating development works in remote villages and the new surrender and rehabilitation policy.

Chavan further said the surrendered Naxalites, Madkam Aayta (25), a platoon party committee member in Maoists’s PLGA battalion No. 1 and Bhaskar (alias Bhogam Lakhha) (26), a party member in the same battalion, carried a reward of Rs 8 lakh each.

Madkam Kamlu (25) and Laxman (alias Madvi Chhannu) (28), both area committee members of Maoists, carried a reward of Rs 5 lakh each, while six others had a bounty of Rs 2 lakh each.

The Naxalites, who have surrendered, were provided an assistance of Rs 50,000 each and would be further rehabilitated as per the government’s policy, the Sukma SP said further.

Last year, 792 Naxalites had surrendered in the Bastar region, which comprised seven districts, including Sukma. The development comes less than a week after the May 21 Abujhmad encounter, in which Basavaraju, the general secretary of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), was killed.

Earlier, during the three-week Operation Black Forest, the security forces killed 31 ultras, half of them women, after attacking their base on the Karreguttalu Hills in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district.

Meanwhile, a commander of the banned CPI (Maoist) was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Jharkhand’s Palamu district, a senior police official said on Tuesday.

Another red rebel, carrying a bounty of Rs 15 lakh, has also been injured in the encounter. Several weapons, including a self-loading rifle, were recovered during the search operation after the gunfight.

India