Maoist movement suffers a serious setback with encounter of Madvi Hidma

The Special Party team of Alluri Sitharama Raju (ASR) district police shot dead the elusive Maoist Madvi Hidma alias Santosh, her wife Madakam Raje alias Rajakka and four others in an encounter near Nellooru village in Maredumilli Mandal, Alluri Sitharama Raju district of Andhra Pradesh in the early hours of Tuesday, November 18, 2025.

Andhra Pradesh DGP Harish Kumar Gupta said that the encounter took place between 6 am and 7 am and combing operations are still ongoing.

Hidma’s killing is considered a major blow to the already weakened Maoist movement; for Hidma not only escaped from the security forces for a long time, but was also considered a military strategist and a fierce warrior. He headed the Central Military Commission (CMC), the main fighting force of the banned CPI (Maoist), and was known for his ability to lead and motivate his fighters with his tactical and combat skills.

Born in 1981 in Sukma, Chhattisgarh (then part of undivided Madhya Pradesh), Hidma was the youngest member of the Central Committee (CC) and the only tribal from the Bastar region to join the CC, the party’s main think tank and decision-making body, in recent years.

His fighting prowess at a young age caught the attention of former General Secretary of the party, Nambala Keshava Rao, also known as Basavaraju, who was killed in an encounter in Abujhmad forest district of Chhattisgarh on May 21, 2025. Hidma quickly rose through the ranks to lead a battalion of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), the Maoist party’s main offensive force.

It carried a reward of Rs. 50 lakhs and was known to have participated in at least 26 major deadly attacks, including the attack on the CRPF camp in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, in 2010, in which 76 CRPF personnel were killed, and the Jhiram Ghati ambush in 2013, in which several Congress leaders, including Mahendra Karma, Chhattisgarh Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel and Vidya Charan Shukla, were killed.

We’re nearing the end of the game

The Maoist party, once considered the biggest terrorist threat to the country by the Union Government, now appears to be a dying movement. The Union Government, including Home Minister Amit Shah, has set a deadline to end the move by March 2026. Accordingly, the government launched Operation Kagar in Maoist stronghold Chhattisgarh in coordination with other Left Extremist (LWE) affected states such as Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal.

CPI (Maoist), which once had around 42 CC members in 2004, now has only 12 members. This year alone, five CC members, including the party’s General Secretary Basavaraju, were killed while key members like Bhupathi alias Mallojula Venugopal Rao surrendered.

Hidma was one of the leaders on whom MK pinned its hopes of reviving the military movement. With his murder, the endgame seems to be approaching.