Old Reds return to Bastar: The state treads cautiously as 3,000 former Maoists make their homecoming

At her mud-walled, lowroofed home in the village of Puwarti in Sukma, Chhattisgarh, Madvi Hunge is busy winnowing rice. She is willing to talk, but not before making a sarcastic complaint: “Till Hidma died, no one came to meet us.”

Madvi Hidma, one of Bastar’s most feared Maoists, was the brother-in-law of Hunge. He headed a dreaded battalion of CPI (Maoist) until he and his wife, Rajakka, were killed in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh last year.

Among Hunge’s guests that day is a young headman, or patel, of a nearby village. Until last year, he had to pay Rs 15,000 to the Maoist party as shulk, or fee, for owning a tractor.


“This is the first year no one is paying a ‘tax’, not even the ‘sangam shulk’ of Rs 350 per villager,” says the patel, requesting anonymity. Sangam is a village-level administrative unit of CPI (Maoist). “Though I am a village headman, I had no option but to follow the party’s diktat. Tables have turned now. When Maoist leaders return to villages, they will have to follow the orders of the patel and other village elders,” he adds.

This fraught reversal of power is a reason why more than 1,000 former Maoists continue to be housed in rehabilitation centres set up in district headquarters across Bastar region, even though the government declared the end of armed Maoism on March 31, 2026—a deadline it had set for itself two years earlier.

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The Bastar division comprises seven districts of Chhattisgarh—Bastar, Bijapur, Dantewada, Kondagaon, Kanker, Narayanpur and Sukma.

NOT A CAKEWALK

Recently, videos of some former Maoists from Bastar walking a ramp in Raipur went viral, suggesting a return to peace. However, rehabilitating former armed cadres, many of whom were highly indoctrinated, is hardly a cakewalk. The state is treading cautiously, keeping former hardcore Maoists in rehab centres in an effort to shield them from a possible backlash from villagers and to prevent renewed radicalisation.

“About 1,800 surrendered Maoists have already returned to their villages across Bastar. Except for a couple of instances in Bijapur district where there were some scuffles with villagers, former Maoists have integrated reasonably well into village life,” says Vivekanand, additional director general of police in charge of anti-Naxal operations in Chhattisgarh. “Some of the highly indoctrinated, hardcore Maoists may take time to shed the sense of authority associated with their earlier leadership roles and adjust to a social order traditionally guided by elders such as patels, gaitas (traditional healers) and pujaris (priests).”

The officer, who does not use a surname, explains that the 1,000-plus cadres in rehabilitation centres are being categorised into different groups, with recent recruits separated from highly radicalised members. “There has been considerable emphasis on their social reintegration and mental preparedness for a new innings. Yoga classes are one of the modules designed to help in that transition,” he says.

To reach Puwarti, ET travelled on a newly paved, 58 km blacktop road from Dornapal to Jagargunda in Sukma, cutting across villages that once witnessed some of Bastar’s bloodiest gunfights.

“It was for the construction of this very road that more than 300 jawans were martyred,” says Amit Kumar, district magistrate of Sukma. Multiple memorials have come up along the route, he adds, as tributes to those who lost their lives. At Tadmetla, for instance, the names of 76 security personnel—mostly from CRPF—who were killed in a devastating Maoist attack in 2010 are etched on marble slabs at the foot of a hillock.

WHEN A COLLECTOR WAS KIDNAPPED

On the way, at Chintagufa, villagers escort this writer to the home of Panda Podiyam, known locally as one of the “most influential former Maoists”. He is often linked to the sensational kidnapping of Alex Paul Menon, who was the collector of Sukma, in 2012—a case that made international headlines.

Sitting in the courtyard of his house, beside his tractor, the 56-year-old is quick to set the record straight. “I was not involved in Alex Paul Menon’s kidnapping. Yes, I was a negotiator for his release,” he says.

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Podiyam recalls that he telephoned bureaucrats in Delhi and elsewhere at the direction of Ravula Srinivas, better known as Ramanna, who headed the Maoists’ Dandakaranya region until his death in 2019.

“When a helicopter dropped off two negotiators from Delhi, as arranged, there was no one but me to receive them. I then escorted them to the nearby village of Kumad Tong, where negotiations continued at a sabha. The collector was being held somewhere in a hideout near Kistaram,” recalls Podiyam.

Menon was released after 12 days in captivity.

About 150-200 members of Hidma’s armed battalion of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) would once gather in the very courtyard where we are now sitting. “The police outpost, barely 100 metres away, could do nothing to prevent such a gathering,” says Podiyam, who surrendered in 2017.

Several villagers offer a telling description of life in those days. There were two nakas or checkpoints—one manned by the security personnel, the other by the Maoists.

LONG SHADOW OF PAST

At Jagargunda, which once hosted a bustling tamarind mandi and drew prosperous traders from Andhra Pradesh, a remnant of the past lies by the roadside, half-sunk in muddy, marshy ground—a large tijori (safe).

Until the 1990s—before the Maoists tightened their grip over the region—it was not unusual for wealthy traders and mahua liquor distillers to own such safes. “This tijori belonged to my stepfather,” says S Nageshwar Rao, 70.

Rao is among the scores of villagers who have recently returned to Jagargunda to reclaim their homes, land and other belongings. When the village emerged as a Maoist stronghold in the mid-2000s, traders, government employees and others fled. Some, like Rao, crossed the state border to begin new lives in Andhra Pradesh.

Among the returnees—many of whom have suffered from Maoist violence—there is palpable anger towards some of the senior commanders now lodged in rehabilitation centres. “Villagers will not allow people like Papa Rao to live happily. They committed so many atrocities that it is difficult for the victims to forget or forgive,” says a Jagargunda resident, as several others around him nod in agreement.

Papa Rao, alias Mongu, was one of south Bastar’s feared Maoist leaders and a member of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (SZC). He surrendered in March this year, just days before the government’s deadline.

Podiyam, however, believes that the surrendered cadres, with a few exceptions, will be welcomed back to their villages, thanks to the goodwill they had earned through their work in the past.

Gaurav Kumar Singh, district magistrate of Raipur, says former Maoists have to win the trust of villagers for a quick return to normalcy in areas once considered highly sensitive.

Singh, who served as chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat in Dantewada between 2016 and 2018, recalls that several civil and police officers had made deliberate efforts to earn the confidence of local communities even at the height of insurgency.

“My wife and I decided that our daughter, Aadya, would be born in Dantewada in 2017. We also made it a point not to shop in Raipur or elsewhere, but to buy whatever we needed from the local markets of Dantewada,” he recalls.

While most surrendered cadres intend to return to their villages, there are exceptions—a few enterprising former Maoists are seeking economic opportunities in and around nearby towns.

BEYOND GUNS

Many have moved to a new life beyond guns.

Five female Maoists who surrendered in Konta, for instance, are running the beautiful Tungal Café, set amidst forest and water bodies on the outskirts of Sukma town. “Surrendered cadres and family members of Maoist victims are working together and happily running the Tungal Café,” says District Magistrate Kumar, describing the initiative as a possible template for Bastar’s social integration in the years ahead.

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Nine female cadres from Sukma, who went viral when they took part in a fashion show in Raipur in August, are now being trained to weave handloom silk products.

“Several surrendered Maoists who were earlier associated with the party’s cultural wing, Chetna Natya Manch, are being roped into stage street plays in villages, spreading awareness about government schemes and initiatives,” says Kumar.

The administration is also looking to reinvent Sukma’s image. “We are planning to introduce river rafting in a 7 km stretch of the Sabari river near Errabore, hoping to attract tourists from cities such as Vijayawada and Hyderabad,” he says. Sukma, he believes, could well emerge as a tourism hotspot in the years to come.

The prospect marks a striking turn for Errabore. Twenty years ago, in 2006, the village made grim national headlines, when Maoists launched a brutal attack on a Salwa Judum camp, killing 31 people. For the police, the hunt is still on for Muppala Lakshmana Rao alias Ganapathi, a politburo member and former general secretary; his wife Alluri Krishnakumari alias Sujatha, an SZC member; their bodyguard Mantu and his Odia wife.

“It is a group of four—three Telugu speakers and an Odia,” says a police officer, requesting anonymity. “But it is unlikely that they are anywhere in Chhattisgarh.”

GANAPATHI & GOSWAMI

When the police looked for clues to track down the 76-year-old Ganapathi, they stumbled on a new lead— the presence of a “mysterious” Assamese Maoist, Rituparna Goswami, in Bastar at least till 2019. A PhD scholar from JNU, Goswami, 47, is from Karbi Anglong and is believed to have been one of Ganapathi’s closest associates.

“When we showed Rituparna’s photograph to some surrendered Maoists from Bastar, one of them immediately recognised him, ‘Oh! He is Anil,’” recalls the police officer. The officer says Rituparna had been moving around Bastar until the pandemic began, using aliases like Anil and Naveen.

For the police, it has opened up yet another trail in their unfinished search for Ganapathi—and raised an intriguing question: where is Anil, or Naveen, after vanishing from Bastar?