Indian forces kill Maoist rebel leader: police

BHUBANESWAR: Indian security forces killed a senior Maoist rebel commander and three other fighters including two women in a raid on Thursday, police said, as authorities push a major offensive against the guerrillas.

New Delhi has launched an all-out campaign against the insurgents and vowed to end the Maoist rebellion by March 2026.

Police in the eastern state of Odisha said they had killed Maoist commander Ganesh Uike in a gunfight in Kandhamal district, after security forces received a tip-off about his location.

Uike, 69, the leader of the Maoist rebels in the coastal state, had a bounty of more than $120,000 on his head.

“Four dead bodies of Maoists” were recovered following the gunfight, top state police officer Yogesh Bahadur Khurania said, identifying one of them as Uike.

Indian security forces kill six Maoist rebels

Khurania said that the other three – two women and a man – were also rebel fighters, adding that their identities were being ascertained.

There were no casualties among the security forces.

Two Maoist fighters were killed in the same state on Wednesday.

India has been cracking down on the remnants of the Naxalite rebellion, named after the village in the Himalayan foothills where the Maoist-inspired insurgency began nearly six decades ago.

The rebellion once controlled nearly a third of the country, with an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 fighters at its peak in the mid-2000s, but it has been dramatically weakened in recent years.

Since 2024, over 500 Maoist rebels have been killed, according to the Indian government.