BHUBANESWAR: On Tuesday morning, a night after the bloody encounter in Kularighat reserve forest area in Gariaband district of Chhattisgarh, five kilometre from Odisha’s Nuapada district, security forces recovered a body with two walking sticks around him. Their first intuition - was it Chalapathi?
After years of tracking the top Maoist leader, 61-year-old Ramachandra Reddy alias Chalapathi, police were well aware that he had problems with his knees and the two sticks gave them optimism that it could actually be him. They wasted no time to verify and matched it with a selfie which Chalapathi had clicked with his wife Aruna a few years back.
The security personnel were elated when Chalapathi’s identification was eventually confirmed. “Police personnel had information that the top Maoist leader could not travel much due to problems with his knees. He was most likely carrying the sticks in the difficult terrains,” said the sources.
The elimination of Chalapathi was a huge success as he was mostly staying in impenetrable forests of Chhattisgarh and also closely looked after the affairs of Mainpur-Nuapada and Kalahandi-Kandhamal-Boudh-Nayagarh divisions.
A native of Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district, Chalapathi, as part of Andhra-Odisha Border Zonal Committee (AOBZC) spearheaded the outfit’s activities in Koraput and cut-off Swabhiman Anchal area in Malkangiri. After Odisha Police gained upper hand in the last 10 years, he shifted to Bastar district of Chhattisgarh and later to Gariaband.
However, Chalapathi remained under Odisha Police’s radar for his involvement in audacious police armoury raid in Nayagarh in 2008, killing of 35 Greyhound commandos and three others in Malkangiri the same year, kidnapping of the then Malkangiri collector R Vineel Krishna among others.
With the combing operation almost over, security personnel are now examining the possible reasons behind Chalapathi’s presence in Kularighat reserve forest area which is only five km away from Nuapada border.
“Chalapathi had a tight security cover as he was a central committee member. His presence in Kularighat could either be to attend a very important meeting to take some major decisions or he was attempting to infiltrate into Odisha,” said sources.
As two Maoist operatives of southern and western districts of the state were reportedly among the 14 killed in the exchange of fire, police believe Chalapathi was probably planning to move into Odisha.
