A close aide of Kishenji, she was with him when he was killed in an encounter Senior Maoist leader Suchitra Mahato, a close aide of Communist Party of India (Maoist) Polit Bureau member Koteswara Rao, alias Kishenji, surrendered in the presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at the State Secretariat here on Friday. “For all these days I believed in the Maoist politics and have spent long years in the forests. But...

Even as speculation that Communist Party of India (Maoist) Polit Bureau member Koteswara Rao, alias Kishenji, was killed in a fake encounter refuses to die down, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee attempted to clear the air on Friday. “Kishenji's death was not something that we did knowingly. It was an incident that occurred,” Ms. Banerjee told journalists at the State Secretariat. Speaking to journalists after the surrender of leading Maoist leader Suchitra...

Seven Maoists, who surrendered to police in Chhattisgarh's Kanker, claimed their leaders forced them to undergo vasectomy to ensure the ultras' cause doesn't get lost in domestic compulsions.  Besides three senior commanders, East Bastar divisional committee member Sunil Kumar and his wife Jayanti, a senior member of the Maoist cultural wing, are among those who surrendered. All the four men claimed they had to undergo vasectomy.  Maoist veterans said vasectomy of members...

Seven members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) surrendered in Chhattisgarh's Kanker district on Monday — a sign, police officers say, that a new policy of rapprochement with rebel cadres is gradually paying dividends. Five of the seven surrendered Maoists are from the Rowghat Area Committee, of which three are relatively senior commanders. Of the remaining two, Sunil alias Rajesh Kumar is a member of the East Bastar Divisional...

The Jharkhand government has appealed to Maoist rebels to make a fresh beginning in the New Year by surrendering to the rule of law, as it responded to feelers from a section of cadres, but did not promise any let-up in ongoing anti-rebel operations. The government gave a month’s time to active members of CPI(Maoist) to return to the mainstream, through an advertisement in local dailies on December 31. In the public...