Dozens of Maoist guerrillas were killed in central India by government forces on Sunday, one of the deadliest operations in recent years against leftist rebels who have waged an insurgency that has ebbed and flowed over several decades.
The operation, in the forested Bijapur area in the state of Chhattisgarh, was carried out against the so-called Naxalite movement, and left 31 rebels dead, along with two members of the police forces, according to the area’s police chief, Jitendra Kumar Yadav.
Chief Yadav said the authorities had also recovered a number of AK-47 assault weapons and several other automatic rifles after the clashes.
“We will completely eradicate Naxalism from the country, so that no citizen of the country has to lose his life because of it,” said Amit Shah, India’s home minister, referring to the left-wing insurgency.
The Maoist insurgency began in eastern India in the 1960s and spread widely in central and southern parts of the country.
The violence peaked in 2010, when more than 600 civilians and over 250 security forces were killed in the conflict.
In recent years, civilian deaths have dwindled, after government operations shrunk the space for the insurgents to operate. The insurgency’s leadership has also struggled, analysts say, in the face of targeted operations, old age and illness.
The Home Ministry told Parliament last year that the threat of leftist extremism had dropped significantly in recent years, in terms of the number of deaths as well as the amount of affected territory.
Deaths of civilians and security forces related to the insurgency in 2023 were 86 percent lower than at their peak in 2010, the ministry said, adding that the number of districts affected by the violence had shrunk to 38 from 126.
Niranjan Sahoo, who studies left-wing extremism at the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank, said the Maoists were struggling to recruit members, among other problems.
He also said they were concentrating their activities in several districts around the Abujhmad forest, including Bijapur, after suffering losses over the years.
“The Maoists are at their weakest point, largely because they have lost a lot of their territory,” he said.
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