Top Maoist leader Azad, alias Cherukuri Raj Kumar, 55, who was in charge of Dandakaranya affairs, was shot dead by the police on Thursday night in Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad district, bordering Maharashtra, two days after Maoists slaughtered 27 CRPF men in Chhattisgarh.
Azad, the CPI Maoist spokesperson and politburo member, was No. 3 in the Maoist hierarchy in the country and was on a mission to rejuvenate left-wing guerrilla activities in South India, including AP, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. His death is a huge blow to the movement.
Along with Azad, another Maoist was also shot dead by the police but is yet to be identified. Their bodies were found between Sarikepalli and Jogapur villages in Wankidi mandal, Adilabad district.
According to the police, the Adilabad district anti-Maoist special party encountered a group of 25 Maoists on the Andhra-Maharashtra border and there was an exchange of fire.
The encounter, which began around 10 pm, lasted nearly two hours. “Two of them died and others managed to escape,” said Adilabad district superintendent of police Pramod Kumar. “Around 120 rounds were fired.”
The SP said special police parties had been combing the area for the last 15 days on the information that Maoists were taking shelter frequently in the villages. “The combing operations were intensified in the last two days,” he added.
The bodies of the slain Maoists have been shifted to Mancherial and post-mortem examinations will be conducted at the government hospital on Saturday morning. The police recovered an AK-47, a 9 mm pistol, two kit bags and party literature from the site. Both the slain Maoists were in plain clothes.
Azad, who had been underground for the past three decades, carried a reward of Rs 12 lakhs on his head. He was named the accused in hundreds of offences throughout India.
Recently, he had exchanged letters with Swami Agnivesh on the possibility of peace talks with the Centre.
The Maoist leader held a bachelor’s degree from REC Warangal in chemical engineering and had discontinued his M.Tech from Vizag engineering college.
Azad was president of the AP Radical Student Union in 1978 and was from Nuzvid in Krishna district. His family resides in Moosarambagh and his wife is in hiding.
In March 2010, his family and rights activists had approached the State Human Rights Commission saying Azad was in the custody of the police and there was a possibility of his being killed in an encounter. However, the police then informed the SHRC that he was not in their custody. Later, the Maoists themselves issued a statement saying they had re-established contact with him.
Rights organisations alleged on Friday that Azad’s killing was stage managed and that the police had picked him up from a locality in Nagpur city on Thursday morning. “This is a stage-managed killing,” said “revolutionary poet” Vara Vara Rao. However, the SP strongly denied the allegations of a fake encounter.
Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh chief minister K. Rosaiah, who is in New Delhi, met Union home minister P. Chidambaram and briefed him about the killing of the Maoist leader. Mr Rosaiah told the home minister that the situation on the Maoist front was under control and effective measures taken by the AP police were yielding good results.