Three Maoists, including Central Committee member Gajarla Ravi and senior female leader Aruna, were killed in an alleged encounter in the Maredumilli forests of Andhra Pradesh’s Alluri Sitharama Raju district on Wednesday.
The third Maoist cadre killed remains unidentified.
The exchange of fire between the Maoists and the anti-Naxal armed forces named “Greyhounds” was a result of a tip received by the Andhra Pradesh police about Naxalite movement in the area.
An AK-47 was also retrieved from the encounter site.
Gajarla Ravi, alias Uday, was the former secretary of the Andhra Odisha Border Special Zonal Committee. He and three out of his four brothers were part of the CPI (Maoist), along with their father, Gajarla Malliah.
Ravi, his brother Saraiah, wife Prameela, sister-in-law Padma, and brother-in-law Ramesh were all killed in various encounters over the years.
Ravi was one of the representatives of CPI (Maoist) engaged in peace talks with the Congress government in 2004–05. He was known as the party’s top military strategist and was on the National Investigation Agency’s most wanted list.
Venkata Ravi Lakshmi Chaitanya, alias Aruna, also a member of the AOB Special Zonal Committee, was the wife of the deceased Maoist leader Chalapathi, who was killed in an encounter in January. Her mother, Mavi, and brother, Azad, were also killed in encounters.
The police suspect that the Maoists had crossed into the area through the Chhattisgarh border.
The intensification of anti-Maoist operations in Central India, as well as the increasing number of extrajudicial killings over the past months, follows Amit Shah’s call to eradicate Maoists by March 2026. General Secretary Basavaraju and 27 other Maoist cadres were killed in a single alleged encounter in May.
Meanwhile, extra armed forces have been deployed in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana following CPI (Maoist)’s call for Bharat Bandh on June 20 in protest of the security operations in Chhattisgarh, which have led to the deaths of many Adivasis.
