Nambala Keshav Rao, the leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), was among the 27 suspected Maoists killed in a gunfight with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur on Wednesday, the Union government said.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah described CPI (Maoist) General Secretary Rao, who is also known as Basavaraju, as the “backbone of the Naxal movement”. His killing is a “landmark achievement in the battle to eliminate Naxalism”, Shah said on social media.

“This is the first time in three decades of Bharat’s battle against Naxalism that a general secretary-ranked leader has been neutralised by our forces,” said the Union home minister.

The Union government also said that Operation Black Forest had concluded. Fifty-four suspected Maoists had been arrested and 84 had surrendered in Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Maharashtra, the home ministry said.

The Chhattisgarh Police had on Wednesday announced that 27 suspected Maoists were killed in a gunfight with security forces in the state’s Abujhmad region.

The gunfight took place near Boter village in the Abujhmad region. Abujhmad is a hilly forest area covering the Narayanpur, Bijapur and Dantewada districts of Chhattisgarh.

A District Reserve Guard team member was also killed in the gunfight, according to the police.

It is “estimated that several senior-level Maoist cadres have either been killed or seriously injured” in the gunfight, the police had said at the time.

With this, more than 185 suspected Maoists have been killed in gunfights with security personnel this year. In 2024, 217 suspected Maoists were killed by security forces.

Malini Subramaniam has reported for Scroll that while many of those killed in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh in 2024 were declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.

The Union government has repeatedly vowed to eradicate “Left Wing Extremism” in the country by March 31, 2026.

CPI demands independent judicial probe into killing of Maoists

The Communist Party of India on Wednesday said that it condemned “the cold-blooded killing of a senior Maoist leader along with several Adivasis” in Chhattisgarh.

The party demanded an independent judicial inquiry into the killing of suspected Maoists.

“It is yet another instance of extrajudicial action carried out under the guise of counterinsurgency operations,” the party said.

The party said that the “repeated use of lethal force instead of lawful arrest” raises concerns about the government’s commitment to democratic norms and the rule of law. “Why was due process—guaranteed by the Constitution—so blatantly ignored,” the party asked.

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