Hyderabad, Nov. 10: Police today claimed to have shot dead the top Maoist leader in Andhra Pradesh and driven the guerrillas out of their dreaded hub, the Nallamala forests.

The killing of Obleshu, state secretary-designate of the CPI (Maoist), is the second time in four months that the police have left the state’s Naxalites headless.

Obleshu — who was about to step into the shoes of Madhav, the Maoist state secretary gunned down on July 23 — was ambushed this afternoon in Kadapa district, police said.

He was killed along with three male and five women guerrillas at a meeting in the jungles of Badwel, a part of the Nallamala forests that stretch over several districts. The dead include a Maoist state committee member, Raghvulu.

“The Maoists have now been wiped out from the Nallamala forest zone,” state police boss Swaranjit Sen told reporters.

District police chief Y. Nagi Reddy said the police surrounded the rebels after being tipped off that the Maoists’ Rayalaseema committee, headed by Obleshu, was to meet in the forest.

Rights activists accused the police of shooting the rebels in a staged encounter. “During the year, the police have killed over 100 Maoists in fake encounters,” rebel singer Gaddar said.

“We want the police to hand over the bodies to their relatives before they start decomposing,” civil rights activist K.G. Kannabiran said.

Obleshu is the state’s fourth Maoist chief to have been killed since 1999.

Nalla Adi Reddy and Seelam Naresh — leaders of the People’s War Group which merged with the Maoist Communist Centre in 2004 to form the CPI (Maoist) — were allegedly caught in Bangalore and killed in the Nallamala forests.

It was deep in these forests near the Guntur-Prakasham border that Madhav, who had Rs 22 lakh on his head, was shot dead at a meeting.

Since January 2005, after peace talks broke down, the Andhra police have had unprecedented success against the Maoists at a time when the rebels have been striking at will in neighbouring Chhattisgarh and several eastern states.

According to the police, nearly 300 rebels have been killed, including several leaders such as Matta Ravi Kumar, who was shot in June this year.

The reverses have apparently prompted the rebels to shift their bases outside the state.

In September, as the Maoists were moving out their weapons in trucks, the police raided one of their forest armouries in Mehboobnagar and seized over 600 rockets as well as dozens of launchers and landmine-making machines.

Today, the police claimed to have found 12 weapons, including an AK-47 and several .303 rifles, and a large amount of ammunition and cash from the encounter site.

Two other rebels were killed in a gun battle in Warangal’s Kolukonda hills.

Naxalite violence, including the battles with police, has claimed over 6,500 lives in the state in the past three decades.

The rebels twice gave peace talks a try — in 2002 with the Telugu Desam regime and in 2004 with the current Congress government — but both collapsed quickly.