In Chhattisgarh's Mohla-Manpur-Ambagarh Chowki district, security forces killed two senior Naxalites carrying a combined bounty of ₹35 lakh on Wednesday. The encounter occurred in the forest of Banda Pahad hill, within the Madanwada police station area, during an anti-Naxal operation by the District Reserve Guard (DRG), with support from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).
The operation was launched based on intelligence inputs regarding the presence of senior Naxal cadres in the area. An exchange of fire ensued as security personnel were cordoning off the Banda Pahad area near Retegaon village amid rainfall. Following the gunfight, the bodies of the two Naxalites were recovered.
The deceased were identified as Vijay Reddy, a member of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of Maoists, who had a reward of ₹25 lakh on his head, and Lokesh Salame, a divisional committee member with a ₹10 lakh bounty. Vijay Reddy also had rewards in neighboring states like Maharashtra, and authorities are gathering details about those.
Police sources indicated that Reddy was a significant Maoist leader in the region bordering Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, managing activities in the RKB division of the Maoist organization. Lokesh was active from 2008, had earlier surrendered in Gadchiroli and was pretending to be leading a normal life with family in Kanker. But according to surrendered cadres, he was operating from Kanker for Kotri area committee.
Security officials said that the operation was conducted under extremely challenging conditions, with heavy rains lashing the forested hills. Officials reported that several high-ranking Maoist leaders from the Kanker, Bastar, and Manpur RKB division, were having a large congregation on Bandapahad. This particular region from Bandapahad and Sitagaon was being used by Maoists as a free zone for training and cache site for Company number 5 of the Maoists, and as it borders Kanker, the top rank Maoist have been reigning since long. The location of encounter is 20 kms from Manpur headquarters and 45 kms from Mohla district headquarters.
This latest success brings the total number of Naxalites neutralized in Chhattisgarh this year to 229. A large number of these eliminations, 208, have occurred in the Bastar division. In a similar operation on March 29, 2025, seventeen Maoists were killed in Sukma district, and on March 20, twenty-six Maoists were killed in the Bijapur-Dantewada region.
