CPI (Maoist) chief ‘plotted’ deadly Gadchiroli attack

Mukesh Ranjan
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 2

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The chief of banned CPI (Maoist), Nambala Keshava Rao, alias Basavaraj, is suspected to have masterminded the Gadchiroli Naxal attack in which 15 personnel of the C-60 commando force and a civilian were killed, said sources in the security establishment.

They said Basavaraj wanted to avenge the 2018 Kasanasur incident where 40 Naxals were killed. In view of the anniversary of the last year’s operations, 13 alerts of a possible Naxal attack on security forces have been issued in the past one month, the sources claimed.

Sources in the North Block said the Maharashtra Police’s preliminary investigation into the Wednesday attack, in which Naxals blew up a private bus using an IED, pointed towards the involvement of Basavaraj. It is suspected that the attack was planned by Basavaraj and executed by Naxals from Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, they said.

It is believed that after succeeding in attacking the police personnel, Basavaraj has gone into hiding in the Abujhmad forest area of Chhattisgarh and the police of the two states are making efforts to trace and nab him, the sources said.

Giving details of intelligence inputs on such possible attacks, sources said the first input was shared on March 21 and since then, there were a dozen such alerts. “On April 27, a Naxal leader Ramko was killed in an encounter with the Maharashtra Police’s C-60 in the Gundurwahi forest area of Gadchiroli. This killing became a trigger for the Wednesday attack,” a senior official in the security establishment said.

The location of the Wednesday blast falls between two police stations — Kukheda and Purada, which was mentioned in one of the inputs, they said.