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.
Because of Azad's seniority - he was a member of the central committee and the politburo, the core governing group of the Maoists - 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, who was also a spokesperson for the Maoists, spent 20 years leading the insurgency. The Andhra police had offered Rs 12 lakh as a reward for information that could help locate him.
Sources say he was finally tracked down to the Jogapur forests on the Andhra-Maharashtra border. He was alone when the police found him; it's unusual for such a senior leader to be unescorted. An AK 47 and a 9 mm pistol were found at the encounter site.
Maoist sympathizer Varavara Rao plans to file a case in the Andhra High court that alleges that Azad was killed in a fake police encounter and that what really happened is that after finding Azad, the police took him to the forests and killed him there. 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.
Read more at: ndtv.com
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