From Prasad Jote to Abujhmad: The Rise and Fall of India's Longest War

The Naxalite insurgency began in 1967 in West Bengal, spreading across India with violent Maoist guerrilla warfare. In 2025, the killing of leader Basavaraju marked a decisive blow to the movement.

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In 2010, then-Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh described Naxalism as "India's biggest internal security challenge." By then, Naxals were striking almost at will.

However, last week, nearly 58 years after that fateful May in Prasadjote, the Indian state delivered what is being hailed as the most significant blow to the insurgency in decades.

On 21 May 2025, in a meticulously coordinated operation lasting over 50 hours, security forces gunned down 27 Maoist insurgents, including the 72-years-old Nambala Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju—the General Secretary and top military strategist of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)—in Abujhmad, the last and most fortified bastion of the so-called liberated zone.