Police action, infighting and eroding local support likely forced Maoist leader Vikram Gowda to flee Wayanad
The Hindu
Intensified police patrols in Kerala force senior Naxal commander Vikram Gowda to flee to Karnataka, leading to arrests and setbacks.
Intensified patrols by the police and anti-Naxal squads in suspected Maoist territories in Kerala may have compelled senior Naxal commander to abandon the tri-junction area bordering Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu and flee to other areas.
Reports said Gowda has been killed in an anti-Naxal operation at Hebri Kabvinale, in the Uduppi district of Karnataka.
According to a senior police official, a joint operation by the governments of Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, the internal divisions among Naxal factions, and a decline in civilian support, contributed to Gowda’s retreat to Karnataka. Notably, there had been no reported sightings of him in Wayanad for over a year.
Since 2016, the Kerala Police have recorded the deaths of four Maoists in encounters, alongside the arrests of three leaders. Among those killed were Koppam Devarajan, a member of the CPI (Maoist) central committee, and Ajita, also known as Kaveri, during a confrontation with the Thunderbolt commandos in Malappuram district’s Padukka forest in 2016.
In 2019, suspected Maoist C.P. Jaleel was killed in Wayanad, and a year later, Velmurugan, 32, from Tamil Nadu, died in an encounter on the Banasura hills in Wayanad.
Recently, Maoist propaganda posters indicated that a female cadre, Kavitha, alias Lakshmi, was killed in an encounter at Uruppukutty, Kannur district, on November 13, 2023.
The arrest of Roopesh, leader of the ‘Western Ghats Special Zonal Committee,’ along with his wife Shyna and three other cadres, near Coimbatore in May 2015, marked a significant setback for the Maoists in the tri-junction area. Intelligence from the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh police supported this operation.
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