KOZHIKODE: CPI (Maoist), which has suffered huge setbacks after a series of arrests and encounter killings, is unlikely to wind up its activities in the Western Ghats. Sources told TNIE that Maoists are planning to regroup after taking stock of the situation and rework their strategies.
The Western Ghats Special Zonal Committee of the Maoists was formed in 2011 with areas coming under Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. It was the fourth ‘Guerrilla Zone’ in the country, others being the North Telangana, Dandakaranya and Andhra-Odisha border special zonal committees.
Everything was moving as per the plan of the Maoists in Kerala and the party even conducted a politic-military campaign (PMC) in 2014, attacking ten targets marking the tenth anniversary of the party’s formation. The party received a boost in 2014 with the merger of CPI-ML (Naxalbari), a splinter group of Maoists in Kerala.
The first setback for the party was the arrest of its senior leader Roopesh from Coimbatore in May, 2015. Maoist central committee member Kuppu Devaraj, who was coordinating the party work in the Western Ghats, was killed in an encounter at Nilambur in November, 2015. To make matters worse, Murali Kannamballi, a central committee member, was arrested from Pune in May 2015 at Pune.
Maoists suffered another blow when four of its cadres- Manivasakam, Rema, Karthi and Aravind- were gunned down by the police at Manjakkandi in Palakkad district. Deepak, a Maoist leader from Dandakaranya who was allegedly imparting military training from cadres in the Western Ghats, was arrested from Coimbatore a few days after the firing.
Maoist cadre Jaleel was killed in the encounter at a resort in Wayanad in March, 2019 and another cadre Velmurugan was shot dead in November, 2020. Kavitha, a member of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Arma (PLGA) suffered serious injuries in the police firing in Kannur in November 2023 and later succumbed to gun wounds.
Senior Maoist leaders including Rajan Chittilappilli, T K Rajeevan, Gautam alias Raghavendra, C P Usman, B G Krishnamurthy and Sanjay Deepak Rao were arrested one by one, seriously crippling the party works in the Western Ghats. At one point of time, there were three dalams or squads- Kabani, Nadukani and Bhavani- for the CPI (Maoist). Around 45 members had taken part in the conference of the party held deep inside the forests in 2014-15.
The Banasura dalam or Kabani (two) was formed after the wiping out Bhavani dalam in the Manjakkandi firing and cessation of the Nadukani dalam. But the activities didn’t get the push Maoists expected and the arrest of Manoj,
Soman and C P Moideen in July- August 2024 finally put an end to the Kabani dalam. The remaining Maoists are learned to have relocated themselves to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka as part of the redeployment plan.
Maoists killed in encounters
Nilambur: Kuppu Devaraj, Ajitha
Manjakkandi: Manivasakam, Rema, Aravind, Karthi
Vythiri: C P Jaleel
Meenmutti: Velmurugan
Arrests
Roopesh: May 2015
Murali Kannamballi: May 2015
Rajan Chittilappilli: December 2020
T K Rajeevan: November 2020
Gautam: November 2020
B G Krishnamurthy: November 2021
Usman: September 2021
Sanjay Deepak Rao: September 2023