Six Maoists killed in fierce encounter with security forces in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur

Six Maoists were killed in a fierce gunfight with security personnel in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district on Tuesday morning, police said. The encounter took place deep inside the Indravati National Park, a known Maoist stronghold in south Bastar, during an anti-Naxal operation that began around 10 am.

According to Bijapur superintendent of police (SP) Jitendra Yadav, the operation was launched following intelligence inputs about the movement of senior Maoist cadres in the forested area. A joint team of the District Reserve Guard (DRG) from Bijapur and Dantewada districts, along with the Special Task Force (STF), took part in the operation. The exchange of fire between the security forces and the insurgents continued intermittently for several hours.

“During a search of the encounter site, security personnel recovered the bodies of six Maoists along with several weapons, including an INSAS rifle, a Sten gun, a .303 rifle, and a cache of explosives,” SP Yadav said. The identities of the slain Maoists are yet to be confirmed, but police suspect they may belong to local area committees operating under the CPI (Maoist).

Additional teams of central and state police forces have been deployed in the surrounding areas to prevent any retaliatory strikes and to continue search operations. The Indravati forest region, spread across Bijapur and Narayanpur districts, has been one of the most active corridors for Maoist activities in recent years.

This latest encounter adds to the growing list of successful anti-Maoist operations in Chhattisgarh this year. With Tuesday’s operation, the total number of Maoists killed in the state in 2025 has risen to 259. Of these, 230 were eliminated in the Bastar division alone, 27 in Gariaband district under the Raipur division, and two in Mohla-Manpur-Ambagarh Chowki district of the Durg division.

Earlier, on September 22, two top Maoist leaders—Raju Dada alias Katta Ramachandra Reddy (63) and Kosa Dada alias Kadari Satyanarayana Reddy (67)—both Central Committee members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist)—were gunned down in Narayanpur district, dealing a major blow to the insurgent network in the Bastar region.

With intensified intelligence-based operations and enhanced coordination between the DRG, STF, and CRPF units, Chhattisgarh Police say the Maoist presence in several southern districts has significantly weakened, though occasional encounters continue in the dense forest zones of Bijapur and Sukma.