November 18 marks what may well be the final chapter in the decades-long Maoist insurgency in India. Deep inside Papikonda National Park in Andhra Pradesh’s Alluri Sitharama Raju district, security forces killed Madvi Hidma, the elusive commander of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the Maoists’ last hope for military revival. His death, coming six months after the killing of General Secretary Nambala Kesava Rao alias Basavaraju in May, signals not just a tactical defeat but the effective collapse of the armed struggle that once threatened to engulf vast swathes of India’s forested heartland.
Hidma’s killing is significant not just for who he was — a tribal leader in a Telugu-speaking dominant party leadership and who rose meteorically to the top echelons of the CPI(Maoist) — but for where it happened. He did not fall in his familiar terrain of Bastar’s dense jungles, which he knew “like the back of his hand”, but in unfamiliar Andhra territory, a testament to how far the movement had been pushed from its strongholds. Gunned down alongside his wife Madakam Raje and four trusted bodyguards, his death was immediately followed by the elimination of seven other cadres, including Metturi Joga Rao alias Tech Shankar, and the arrest of 50 Maoists across Andhra Pradesh within 24 hours.
