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

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.

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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-year-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.

The symbolic value of this act will not be lost on anyone—the killing of the most senior Maoist military commander, at his home, under the protection of elite PLGA (People's Liberation Guerrilla Army) guards, and executed by the District Reserve Guard (DRG)—a unit composed largely of surrendered Naxals and local tribal youth—carries a message louder than any bullet. That former insurgents, now in state uniform, penetrated the heart of Maoist territory to eliminate their ex-commander marks not just a tactical success but a psychological and ideological rupture in the movement.