41 Maoists, including 39 from Chhattisgarh, surrender before Telangana Police

Hyderabad: In yet another blow to the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), 41 Maoists, including 39 from Chhattisgarh, surrendered before Telangana Police on Friday.

The Maoists, including six senior functionaries of Company Platoon Committee Member/Divisional Committee Member (CyPCMs/DVCMs) rank, along with 24 firearms, surrendered and joined the mainstream in the presence of Telangana Director General of Police B. Shivadhar Reddy.

The surrendered arms include one INSAS Light Machine Gun, three AK-47 Rifles, five SLR Rifles, seven INSAS Rifles, one BGL gun, four .303 Rifles, one Single-shot Rifle and two Air guns.

The cadres from Telangana who surrendered are Erragolla Ravi alias Santhosh, 40, Komaram Bheem Asifabad – Mancherial Divisional Committee (K-M DVC) Secretary and Kanikarapu Prabhanjan, 33, a Party Member (PM).

The remaining surrendered Maoists are from Chhattisgarh and they include 11 cadres of People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) Battalion, five cadres of 2nd Central Regional Command (CRC) Company of Telangana State Committee, four cadres of Cherla-Shabari Area Committee, Bhadradri Kothagudem-Alluri Seetha Rama Raju DVC of Telangana State Committee, five cadres of Platoon-33 of South Sub Zonal Bureau, Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC), nine cadres of South Bastar DVC of DKSZC, four cadres of Darbha DVC of DKSZC and one cadre of Gangaloor AC, West Bastar DVC of DKSZC.

The cadres handed over 24 firearms and 733 live rounds of ammunition of various calibres and eight BGL shells. The DGP said that the surrender of weapons has significantly weakened the operational and combat capability of the CPI (Maoist) in the region.

The DGP said that the surrender follows the appeal made by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on October 21, urging CPI (Maoist) cadres to abandon violence, return to the mainstream, and participate in the saturation of development and welfare of the State and its people.

According to the police chief, the reasons for surrender include arbitrary manner in which CPI (Maoist) leadership was deploying cadres to unfamiliar and distant areas, sustained pressure from security forces and non-cooperation and dilution of their logistic networks resulting in restricted mobility and operational setbacks, ideological divergence and disillusionment, leadership disputes within various formations of the CPI (Maoist), harsh living conditions, deteriorating health, and prolonged separation from families coupled with weakening relevance of ideology.

As per the Telangana government’s rehabilitation policy, DVCM/ CyPCM have been given Rs 5 lakh each, ACM/PPCM Rs 4 lakh each, Party Member (PM) Rs 1 lakh each.

As per the guidelines of the Ministry of Home Affairs, incentives are admissible for the surrender of arms.

Total eligible reward amount of Rs 1,46,30,000 will be disbursed to all the 41 surrendered cadres as part of the state and Centre’s relief and rehabilitation policy.

An interim relief of Rs 25,000 each has now been handed over to all the 41 surrendered cadres.

Shivadhar Reddy said a total of 509 underground cadres of CPI (Maoist) have surrendered before Telangana Police so far this year. They include two Central Committee Members (CCMs), 11 State Committee Members (SCMs), three Divisional Committee Secretaries (DVCS), 17 DVCMs/CyPCMs, and 57 ACMs/PPCMs.

Currently, 54 underground CPI (Maoist) cadres are natives of Telangana, including five CCMs, eight SCMs, 13 DVCS/DVCMs, 16 ACS/ACMs and 12 PMs.

Of these, only two SCMs and four ACS/ACMs are currently active in the Telangana State Committee, while the remaining cadres are operating in other states, including Chhattisgarh.

Five out of the seven Central Committee Members of CPI (Maoist) are natives of Telangana, highlighting the significance of Telangana in the organisation’s leadership structure.

The CPI (Maoist) leadership has instructed its underground cadres to move out of Chhattisgarh and disperse to other areas until 31 March 2026, the deadline set by the Government of India for eliminating the CPI (Maoist) problem.

The leadership has conveyed to the cadres that security operations will be scaled down after this date and that they will be able to resume their underground activities thereafter. This assurance, however, is misleading and amounts to a false promise, the DGP said and appealed to all Maoists to surrender.

IANS