Hyderabad: In a major setback to CPI (Maoists), two key Maoists leaders – Devji alias T Tirupati and M Rajireddy – reportedly surrendered before Telangana police. The duo are from Telangana.
These two leaders were believed to have surrendered after the Central government in coordination with the Telangana police re-launched the search operation in Karegutta Hills on the Telangana border.
Apart from Devji of Peddpalli in Telangana, Rajireddy, and 16 other Maoists surrendered, it is learnt. They surrendered before the police in Asifabad forest. After the encounter of Nambala Keshava Rao, Devji led the party as general secretary.
Keshav Rao alias Basavaraju and 26 other hardcore Maoists killed in an encounter with the security forces in Narayanpur of Chhattisgarh in May 2025. With the surrender of the two key Maoists leaders, the Telangana police achieved a major success in their fight against the Maoists.
On Saturday, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said Naxalism would be eliminated from the country by the March 31 deadline set by the government. Addressing the 87th CRPF Day Parade at Guwahati, the first ever in the northeast, Shah said the force played an important role in Jammu and Kashmir, where the number of stone-pelting incidents has dropped to zero, besides being deployed to handle ethnic violence in Manipur and breaking the back of Maoists in only three years.
Naxalism had spread across 12 states and countless districts of the country, and when the Centre resolved to uproot the menace, the CRPF and CoBRA force personnel played the most crucial role in the effort, he said.
The home minister noted that such a huge, complex and difficult task was completed in just three years. “Because of the CRPF personnel, we can confidently say that by March 31, 2026, the country will be completely free from Naxalism,” he asserted.
Praising the force for Operation Black Forest in the Karreguta Hills on the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border, in which 31 Naxals were killed in April-May 2025, Shah said CRPF personnel carried out the operation over 21 days in extremely-challenging geographical conditions, enduring a temperature of 45 degrees Celsius under the scorching sun, and eliminated the Naxalites’ stronghold.
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