Chhattisgarh Encounter: Who was Basava Raju, top Maoist man killed in Abujhmad encounter?

Written by Sreenivas Janyala , Jayprakash S Naidu
Hyderabad, Raipur | Updated: May 21, 2025 16:48 IST

The operation ess convoy at Jhiram Ghati in which state party leaders were stabbed and gunned down.

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He hails from Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh and was attracted to the CPI(ML) People’s War Group from an early age. He eventually joined it in the early 1980s.

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Prior to getting attracted to Maoist ideology, Basava Raju was a kabaddi player in school and junior college. He was known to be one of the most academically accomplished Naxal leaders, with a B.Tech degree from the National Institute of Technology, Warangal.

Basava Raju was heading the CPI (Maoist) Military Commission when, in November 2018, he was asked to take over as the General Secretary after the resignation of Ganapathy.

Keshava Rao graduated at a time when the NIT, which was earlier known as Regional Engineering College (REC), had become a fountainhead of Maoist ideology and many students who studied at the institute went on to join the Maoist movement.

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He is known to have hobnobbed with other guerrilla movements like the LTTE and worked extensively in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.

He was also known as an explosives expert who prepared deadly IEDs used to ambush security forces, and was the NIA’s most wanted man with a reward of over Rs 1 crore.

The killing of Araku Telugu Desam Party MLA Kidari Sarveswara Rao and ex-MLA Siveri Soma on September 23, 2018, by the Maoists is attributed to a plan set in motion by Basvaraj.

What is the Abujhmad encounter?

According to sources, the operation by the District Reserve Guard (DRG) from four districts of Narayanpur, Dantewada, Bijapur and Kondagaon was undertaken based on information that a senior Maoist leader was hiding in a specific area in Abujhmad.

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The Abujhmad is unsurveyed land larger than the state of Goa. While a large part of it is in Narayanpur, it also extends to Bijapur, Dantewada, Kanker and Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district.

This article went live on May twenty-first, twenty twenty-five, at forty-four minutes past one in the afternoon.