Who Was Nambala Keshava Rao Alias Basavaraju: The Maoist Chief Killed in Bastar Operation

Who Was Nambala Keshava Rao Alias Basavaraju: Nambala Keshav Rao, also called Basavaraju, the general secretary of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), was the 70-year-old killed in the gunfight on Wednesday. He took over leadership of the organization in November, 2018 when Muppala Lakshmana Rao alias Ganapathy had resigned for medical reasons.

Basavaraju was killed along with 26 other Maoists in a fierce gun battle with security forces in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh.

Union home minister Amit Shah confirmed Nambala Keshav Rao's killing in a post he made on X, calling killing the general secretary of CPI(M) a historic accomplishment in the war against naxalism.

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“Today, in an operation in Narayanpur, Chhattisgarh, our security forces have neutralized 27 dreaded Maoists, including Nambala Keshav Rao, alias Basavaraju, the general secretary of CPI (Maoist), topmost leader, and the backbone of the Naxal movement,” Shah said in a post on X.

“This is the first time in three decades of Bharat’s battle against Naxalism that a general secretary-ranked leader has been neutralized by our forces. I applaud our brave security forces and agencies for this major breakthrough,” he said.

Prime minister Narendra Modi also congratulated the security forces for the outstanding accomplishment.

Basavaraju, who trained as an engineer then enrolled for a masters and dropped out, was considered a master Maoist strategist by police and had a ₹1.5 crore reward on his head. According to an intelligence report from 2011, like the rest of them, he was known to carry an AK-47 everywhere he went.

Naturally, Basavaraju was just one of the various names that Keshava Rao had including Krishna, Vinay, Ganganna, Prakash, BR, Umesh, Raju, Vijay, Keshav, and Narasimha Reddy.

Keshava Rao was the son of a teacher, he hailed from the village of Jiyyannapeta, Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh.

Keshava Rao started his elementary education in his village. He did his high school in Talagam (his grandfather's village in Tekkali revenue block) and joined Tekkali Junior College for Intermediate studies.

While in his second year of undergraduate studies, he was inducted into the B Tech programme of Regional Engineering College, Warangal (now known as the National Institute of Technology - NIT Warangal)

Security agencies inform that he was then associated with Radical Students Union, the students' wing of the CPI (Marxist Leninist) People's War, a dominant Naxalite outfit started by Kondapalli Seetharamaiah.

In 1984 he shifted to CPI (M-L) People's War full time, dropping out from pursuing his M.Tech degree.

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For the next four decades, he remained under cover.

Residents of Jiyyannapet village told local reporters on Wednesday he never returned to the village after joining the CPI (M-L) Peoples War.

Keshava Rao, acquired a magnanimous reputation within the movement as tactician of Maoist operations, adept at guerilla warfare planning and execution, connections to arms dealers and military strategies.

In 1987, Basavaraju received ambushes and explosives training in the Abujhmad forests of Bastar from former LTTEmen, along with senior Maoist leaders Ganapathy and the later Kishanji.

Basavaraju's rise through the party continued in 1992 when he became a member of the central committee of CPI (ML) People’s War.

Later, when CPI (ML) PW merged with the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) to become CPI (Maoist), Basavaraju was appointed secretary of the Central Military Commission. He held this post for about a decade and in 2018, became general secretary.

However, law enforcement agencies told another story about him. They have no new pictures of him and investigators have found that, since leaving his hometown in the late 1970s, he has no property there. His primary areas of operation are reported to be in Chhattisgarh, Telangana and parts of Maharashtra.

He had been operating out of Abujhmad, police said.

Keshava Rao has been implicated in multiple cases, such as the claymore mine attack on chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu that took place at Alipiri in Tirupati in 2003. He was also the mastermind of the Chintalnar massacre in April 2010 in which Maoists attacked a group of CRPF personnel who were returning from patrol, killing 74 CRPF soldiers.

Keshav Rao was also responsible for the 2013 attack on Mahendra Karma to name another significant incident. Karma was the founder of Salwa Judum (a state sponsored anti-Maoist militia) and in the ambush, he was killed with 27 others.

He's also alleged to be the mastermind behind the attack on Greyhounds police in October 2008 at Balimela, on Andhra-Odisha border, where 37 police personnel were killed.

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