Hyderabad: In a continuing crackdown on Maoist leadership, security forces gunned down a senior CPI (Maoist) functionary from Telangana in an encounter near Bijapur in Chhattisgarh on Friday. The slain cadre was identified as Mailarapu Adelu, known by his aliases Bhaskar, Jangu Dada, and Mahesh—a key figure within the outlawed group.Bhaskar served as a Telangana state committee member and secretary of the Mancherial–Kumuram Bheem-Asifabad (MKB) divisional committee, a crucial zone for Maoist operations in Telangana.Undercover operations The encounter was part of a coordinated offensive by the Chhattisgarh police’s special task force (STF), district reserve guard (DRG), and the CoBRA unit of the Central Reserve Police Force, aimed at dismantling the upper echelons of Maoist leadership in the region.Aged 53, Bhaskar hailed from Pochera village in Boath mandal of Telangana’s Adilabad district. Born into a Scheduled Caste (Madiga) farming family, he reportedly dropped out of school before joining the Maoist ranks. Over the years, he rose through the cadre to become a senior strategist and operative.Fluent in Telugu, Hindi, and Gondi, he was said to have strong ties with tribal communities like the Gothikoyas, and was reportedly carrying an AK-47 rifle during the encounter. Telangana police records show he carried a bounty of 20 lakh. His wife, Kanthi Lingavva alias Anitha, also a divisional committee member in the same zone, was killed in an encounter in Dec 2022.Major setbacks to MaoistsFriday’s operation comes on the heels of the killing of central committee member Sudhakar, a top Maoist ideologue and head of the technical wing, who was neutralised in the same district on Thursday. These back-to-back operations follow the high-profile death of CPI (Maoist) general secretary Basavaraju in an encounter in Narayanpur on May 21. At 70, Basavaraju was the topmost leader of the outfit, and his death is widely seen as a severe blow to the Maoist command chain.
