Ailaiah after his surrender

Hyderabad, Feb. 16: A Maoist top gun who masterminded a deadly water ambush on a crack force and revolutionised rebel firepower with rocket technology surrendered to police last night after 15 years in the underground.

Konakuru Ailaiah gave himself up before DIG B. Shivdhar Reddy at the Begumpet headquarters of the Special Intelligence Branch, yards from the home of a man he nearly got six years back — former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.

Police sources said Ailaiah carried a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head.

The surrender is the latest blow to Maoists in Andhra Pradesh who have lost 337 cadres in the last four years since the failed 2004 peace talks with the state government. Some 2,000 have surrendered since, while 6,759 have been arrested.

Ailaiah — who gave himself up along with his wife Shyamala — claimed family problems and poor health were the immediate causes of his surrender, but analysts said the 41-year-old had been unhappy with the leadership.

Although he had been appointed state CPI (Maoist) secretary, his violent ways — like the butchering of 17 persons during a 2005 attack on a police station in Kurnool district — kept him away from crucial party positions. The water ambush he masterminded at Orissa’s Balimela reservoir last June killed nearly three dozen crack commandos.

Known as the architect behind modernising the Maoist arsenal with landmines and rocket launchers, Ailaiah is also said to have plotted the murders of two legislators besides the October 2003 claymore mine attack on Naidu.

Ailaiah was produced before the media this afternoon by state home minister K. Jana Reddy. The Maoist leader said he had surrendered because the social change he had sought to bring in had not come and his family wanted him to join the mainstream.

Swarnalatha, Ailaiah’s daughter from his first marriage, said she was happy. “I have not seen him since my birth,” the 15-year-old, who lives with her grandparents in Ailaiah’s home district Nalgonda, said.