Maoists' Last Stand

India’s greatest internal security threat from Maoist fighters is receding, but state complacency continues to cost lives.

- Sandeep Unnithan

Two ambushes a little over a month apart illustrate the perils of underestimating the Maoists. On April 24, a CRPF road-opening party comprising 76 troopers at Burkapal in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district was surrounded and overrun by two Maoist ‘companies’ numbering over 300 guerrillas. Twenty-five CRPF troopers lay dead as Maoists directed indiscriminate fire at them. It was their deadliest strike since the April 2010 ambush and massacre of 75 CRPF troopers in Chintalnar, Dantewada district, and followed the March 11 gunning down of 12 CRPF troopers in Bhejji, 20 km from district capital Sukma.

Both ambushes occurred in the Maoist stronghold of Sukma in what the extremists call their annual Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign (TCOC)— the period between March and June when they are in peak strength and constantly probe for any slackening of guard. In Burkapal, for instance, they struck just when the troopers broke for lunch. In Bhejji, they carefully watched the CRPF road-opening party follow a predictable routine before laying a deadly ambush. These 37 deaths in just six weeks were a setback for the government celebrating a stunning decline in Maoist-related violence in 2016.

On March 17 this year, Union home minister Rajnath Singh told the Lok Sabha that the number of Left wing Extremism (LWE)-affected districts had contracted from 106 to 68. The 35 ‘most affected’ districts among them were in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Maharashtra.