Hyderabad, July 25: The Maoists may be striking at will in Chhattisgarh, but in Andhra Pradesh they are feeling the heat.

When police gunned down the state’s top CPI (Maoist) leader, Madhav, on Sunday, it was the latest in a series of successes against the rebels in the past 18 months.

The YSR government, which had initiated talks with the Maoists, had cracked down hard once the negotiations collapsed. “Since January 2005, a total of 259 Maoists, including 30 top leaders, have been killed in encounters while 1,138 have been arrested and 1,104 have surrendered,” a buoyant state police chief, Swaranjit Sen, told reporters.

“It seems the government used the peace process as a ploy to collect more intelligence on the Maoist leaders so that they could be gradually eliminated,” said Maoist sympathiser and folk singer Gaddar.

The 48-year-old Madhav is the third Maoist state secretary to have been killed in a police encounter 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 in deep in these forests between Guntur and Prakasham districts that Madhav, who carried a Rs 22-lakh reward on his head, was shot dead after a tip-off about a rebel meeting.

In the past seven years, the Maoists have lost several other senior leaders, such as north Telengana zone secretary Padmakka in 2001, Anupuram Komaraiah alias A.K. in 2003 and Matta Ravi Kumar in June this year. Warangal district secretary Yadanna, Khammam district secretary Jagdish, and Nallamala military squad leader Suresh, too, figure on the list.

The reverses have prompted the rebels to set up bases along the borders with Orissa and Chhattisgarh. In Khammam, they are reportedly operating from a 200-square-km area in the border forests.

“The Maoists control this area, from where they can enter and leave all the three states at will on 17 routes,” said Khammam deputy superintendent of police Uday Bhaskar.

Former Maoist state secretary Ramakrishna alias A. Hargopal was surrounded in the Nallamala forests twice since 2005 only to be let off because of political compulsions. But the police shot dead Riyaz, a prominent leader of the Janashakti faction.

Recently, Sudhakar, secretary of the Maoists’ Andhra-Orissa border zone committee, narrowly escaped the police.

The police claim they have now “sterilised” the districts of Telengana and almost “cleaned up” the Nallamala forests stretching across parts of the Guntur, Prakasham, Kurnool and Nalgonda districts.

“We have wiped out all the Maoist dalams (squads) in Warangal and Nizamabad,which also controlled Karimnagar and Adilabad,” said Nizamabad superintendent of police Maheshchandra Ladda.

Poet and peace broker P. Varavara Rao claimed the police had killed rebels who were sick. “It seems most of the activists were infected with chikungunya and were unable to move around. The police hit them when they were helpless.”