Rs 5 crore bounty: Are rewards making anti-Maoist operations more deadly?

Many of those killed in Bastar this year have been declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists. But several families dispute this.

Aug 12, 2024 - 23:30

Rs 5 crore bounty: Are rewards making anti-Maoist operations more deadly?

Deep inside the forests of Bastar in southern Chhattisgarh, Maoist insurgents drawn from local Adivasi communities have been locked in a low-intensity war with the Indian state for nearly four decades. This year, Chhattisgarh police claim to have made a major breakthrough in the conflict, killing 141 Maoists in 38 encounters, higher than any annual tally seen in the past, barring 2009.

This series brings you the stories behind those numbers by travelling to the sites where the encounters took place and speaking to the families of those killed.

She lay on the ground with her head turned sideways, nose and mouth bloodied, eyes partially open. The dead woman in the photograph, according to a press statement of the Chhattisgarh police, was Sanni alias Sundri of Vattekal village, a member of company number six of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army, the armed wing of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

The statement said she was among six Maoists killed during a gunfight between the security forces and the insurgents in the forests near Gobel village in Narayanpur district on June 7.

According to the police, she was no ordinary Maoist – she had a bounty on her head. Any security personnel who killed her was entitled to receive...