In a landmark victory for India’s internal security forces, top CPI(Maoist) leader Nambala Keshava Rao, alias Basavaraju, was killed on Wednesday in Narayanpur, Chhattisgarh, during an intelligence-based operation by the District Reserve Guard (DRG).
Basavaraju, who held the rank of General Secretary of the CPI(Maoist), was the mastermind behind some of the deadliest Maoist attacks in the country. He orchestrated the 2010 Dantewada massacre, where 75 CRPF personnel were ambushed and killed, and the 2013 Jheeram Ghati attack, in which several senior Congress leaders were assassinated.
A ruthless strategist and shadowy figure in India’s Red Corridor, Basavaraju symbolized the violent core of the Maoist insurgency. His elimination is not just a tactical success—it is a symbolic blow to the fractured and rapidly collapsing Maoist movement under the tough anti-Naxal policy spearheaded by Home Minister Amit Shah.
There was a time when India bled silently. A time when Maoist terror strangled the soul of our democracy from the forests of Bastar to the hills of Jharkhand. Villages were burnt, jawans were ambushed, and politicians pontificated as India’s Red Corridor turned redder—with blood.
But that era has ended. And the credit for this decisive shift belongs to one man who doesn’t blink when it comes to national security—Amit Shah. As Union Home Minister, Amit Shah didn’t inherit a fight. He took charge of a war. And he did what few before him had the conviction or courage to do—crush Naxalism at its roots.
Let’s remind ourselves of the truth the Lutyens’ elite often ignore. Maoist terrorism—romanticized as “revolution” by urban intellectuals—was never about tribal rights or social justice. It was about power. Gun power. The power to instill fear, collect extortion, derail elections, and kill our men in uniform.
Back in 2010, at the peak of Left-Wing Extremist (LWE) violence, India recorded 2,258 incidents of Naxal violence and 1,005 deaths, including civilians and security forces. 223 districts were under Maoist influence. This wasn’t an insurgency. It was an internal war.
When Amit Shah walked into the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2019, there was no confusion about his intent. He wasn’t there to “dialogue” with extremists. He was there to eradicate them. And he did it with surgical precision, combining intelligence, coordination, and political will.
Under his leadership, the results are there for all to see:
•Incidents of Naxal violence dropped by over 67%: From 833 in 2018 to just 272 in 2023.
•Deaths due to Naxalism fell by 83%: From 240 in 2018 to 41 in 2023.
•Civilians caught in crossfire? Down to 11 in 2023 from a shocking 720 in 2010.
•Naxal-affected districts reduced from 96 to 45, with only 25 considered severely impacted.
These are not just numbers. These are lives saved, villages secured, and a nation reclaimed.
Amit Shah’s counter-Naxal policy was clear, coordinated, and comprehensive.
1. Zero Tolerance for Terror
There were no half-measures. Elite units like the CoBRA commandos and Greyhounds were given advanced tech—drones, thermal imaging, satellite data—to neutralize Maoist hideouts. Shah personally reviewed operations with state DGPs and CRPF heads, insisting on inter-state coordination.
Maoists thrived on forest borders between states. Shah eliminated that advantage by ensuring joint operations without jurisdictional ego.
2. Crushing the Leadership
A war is won when you decapitate its command. Under Shah’s watch, top Naxal leaders were eliminated:
•Milind Teltumbde, a Politburo member and urban-Maoist ideologue, was killed in 2021.
•Sainath alias Deepak, another senior leader, was neutralized in 2023.
•Over 2,700 cadres surrendered between 2019 and 2024, many disillusioned and fearful.
What you see is not desertion. It is the collapse of the Naxal command structure.
3. Weaponizing Development
Amit Shah knew this battle could not be won by bullets alone. Where Maoists destroyed roads, he built them. Where they burnt schools, he reopened them. Under his directive:
•12,000 km of roads were laid across Maoist belts under PMGSY.
•Over 4,000 mobile towers were erected to end digital isolation.
•Recruitment drives brought over 35,000 tribal youth into police and paramilitary forces.
•The Aspirational Districts Programme saturated LWE-hit areas with infrastructure, healthcare, education, and jobs.
When tribals began donning uniforms instead of running into jungles, the Maoists knew their time was up.
Amit Shah launched a silent psychological war. Maoists had fed off propaganda for decades—painting the Indian State as the enemy. Shah turned that narrative on its head.
•Tribal forces like Bastar Fighters were created to protect their own communities.
•Surrendered Naxals were given platforms to speak. Their words, not bullets, began breaking Maoist myths.
•Cultural events, football leagues, school scholarships—everything the Maoists denied, the government provided.
This wasn’t counter-insurgency. This was counter-brainwashing.
Let’s be blunt—many before Shah tried to tackle Naxalism. Some meant well. Others only posed for cameras after every ambush. Amit Shah did what they couldn’t—he stayed focused, consistent, and unrelenting.
He chaired over 15 high-level LWE review meetings, ensured funding for state police modernization (₹3,000+ crore), and removed bureaucratic hurdles for infrastructure projects in “hostile” zones.
While the world was distracted, Amit Shah was working silently to win India’s longest war.
Make no mistake, Shah’s crackdown wasn’t just on jungle-based guerrillas. He also turned the heat on their urban ideological backers—the self-proclaimed “activists,” professors, and NGOs that provided the intellectual camouflage for armed rebellion.
The Bhima Koregaon case, arrests of urban Maoist operatives, and the digital forensics of their communication proved one thing: Naxalism was a well-oiled network of guns and gigabytes.
Amit Shah didn’t buy the liberal lie that these were “poets” and “thinkers.” He called them what they are: urban enablers of rural terror.
Let’s be real—Naxalism hasn’t vanished. Pockets of resistance remain in south Bastar, Gadchiroli, and parts of Jharkhand. But what exists is a fractured, demoralized, and decapitated insurgency, gasping for survival. Their recruits are drying up. Their arms supply is broken. And their ideological credibility lies in ruins.
The Red Corridor is now a dotted line fading on the map of India.
History will record this phase as a turning point. A nation once crippled by internal terror has found its spine. And Amit Shah’s leadership will be remembered as the steel in that spine.
He didn’t negotiate with terrorists. He didn’t appease extremists. He led with clarity, courage, and conviction.
India needed an iron hand. It found one in Amit Shah.
And with that hand, Naxalism was not managed—it was crushed.
