A BIG BODY BLOW

In the dense, unforgiving forests of Dandakaranya, where the line between predator and prey blurs with every rustle of leaves, a dramatic chapter in India's long-standing battle against left-wing extremism (LWE) has just been written.

- By Amarnath K. Menon

PRIZE SCALP 'Chalapati' (inset), eliminated in a Jan. 21 encounter in Chhattisgarh, was a CPI (Maoist) 'Central Committee' member and a key figure in the insurgency for long

The killing of R.R. Pratap Reddy, a.k.a. Chalapati, a towering figure in the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist)'s Central Committee, marks not just the end of a man but a seismic shift in the insurgency's trajectory.

On January 21, the 62-year-old Maoist leader and 15 of his comrades-six women among them-were gunned down in a fierce encounter near the Udanti Sitanadi wildlife sanctuary, 160 kilometres east of Raipur, in Chhattisgarh's Gariaband district along the Odisha border. Chalapati had been steering Maoist activities in Odisha before he was finally trapped by a joint team of Chhattisgarh's District Reserve Guard, Odisha's Special Operations Group and the elite COBRA unit of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). For the security forces, neutralising a Central Committee member is no ordinary feat. These elusive figures, often described as the brain trust of the Maoist movement, have historically managed to defy capture, slipping through the cracks of central and east India's vast and rugged terrain.