Top Maoist leader Azad killed in AP

NEW DELHI: Going for the big retaliatory kill less than three days after Naxalites massacred 27 CRPF personnel in Narayanpur, Chhattisgarh, the Andhra Pradesh police on Friday gunned down top CPI (Maoist) leader and polit bureau member, Cherukuri Rajkumar alias Azad, in a forest shootout in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh.

Azad, considered No 3 in the CPI (Maoist) hierarchy, was the main spokesperson for the banned outfit. Acting on intelligence alerts by some Maoist couriers about Azad’s likely presence at a CPI(Maoist) meeting to be held in the forests of Jogapur in Adilabad, the Andhra Pradesh police swooped on the venue at around 10 pm on Thursday.

An encounter followed and there was exchange of fire until almost 3 am. Azad was gunned down in the process, along with two other Maoists.

According to Adilabad SP Pramod Kumar, 25 Maoists may have been involved in the gunfight. While the police found bodies of two rebels, the remaining melted away into the forests.

Azad, involved in dozens of murders including that of Congress legislator Narsa Reddy and a failed assassination attempt on former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Janardhan Reddy, was a media-savvy, engineering post-graduate, who had almost become the voice of Ganapathy. He carried a reward of Rs 12 lakh on his head.

Having joined the Naxalite movement during his student days and later leading the Radical Students Union during the Emergency, Azad had been associated with People’s War Group and thereafter with the CPI(Maoist) for nearly three and a half decades.

The Centre on Friday lauded the Andhra Pradesh police for dealing the big blow to the CPI(Maoist). “The Andhra police, enriched by years of experience and practice in fighting the Naxalites, have built up good network of informers and are able to track the Maoist leaders across the state,” noted a senior MHA official.

“The killing of Azad is a far bigger blow to Naxalites than the killing of 27 jawans on Tuesday was to the CRPF,” the official said adding that following the killing of the CPI(Maoist)’s No 3 man, the two top leaders, including the seniormost Ganapathy, would feel the heat and may intensify scrutiny on informers who may have infiltrated their ranks.

As it is, the CPI(Maoist) polit bureau has immensely shrunk in size, with many of the members either killed or in jail.

These include top Maoist leader Kobad Gandhy, the intellectual ideologue who was picked up from New Delhi sometime last year, besides Mihir Besra, Pramod Mishra, Balraj, Amitabh Bagchi and Ashutosh Tudu. The polit bureau, as it stands today, is therefore effectively made up of Ganapathy, Prashant Bose, Koteswara Rao, N Keshava Rao, Mallajula Venugopal and Katakan Sudarshan.

Like Ghandy, Azad was also seen as the intellectual face of the outfit. An engineering post-graduate from the Regional Engineering College in Warangal, Azad used to write articles for magazines on Maoist ideology. He was also considered a master strategist among Maoists.

Azad had apparently gone missing in March and the Maoist outfit had alleged that he was kept in illegal custody by Andhra Pradesh Police. Ten days later, the Maoists issued another statement saying their leader was safe.

Following Azad’s death, security agencies have sounded a high alert in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Chhatttisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal. The tension is pronounced given that the CPI(Maoist) has already come out with a statement alleging that Azad was killed in a staged shootout.

The outlawed outfit alleged that the police picked up Azad in Nagpur, brought him to Adilabad and then killed him. The outlawed outfit suspects the other slain Maoist to be Sahadev.

Maoist sympathiser and revolutionary writer Varavara Rao, meanwhile, has filed a petition in the Andhra Pradesh High Court seeking filing of a murder case against the policemen involved.