The body of Pandey, identified earlier as Sahdev, an aid of Azad, by police. File picture

Hyderabad, July 5: Andhra Pradesh appears to have achieved what none of the other Maoist-hit states has, killing one top guerrilla after another and almost crushing the insurgency on its soil after suffering it for almost half a century.

In the past five years, the state police have eliminated or captured 15 of the 23 members of the Maoist central committee — the latest being the guerrillas’ No. 3, Azad, who was killed on Friday.

Among the over 60 others gunned down since 2005 are four Maoist state committee secretaries, 27 state committee members, four commanders and several technical committee members.

Sources said a string of factors had resulted in the success, the prime reason possibly being political will. After several state governments had flirted with the rebels and tried in vain to turn them around, chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy went full throttle in 2004, having lured the rebels out of their lair with the ruse of peace talks.

The state raised four battalions of commandos, called Greyhounds, especially to take on the Maoists in their dens, safe houses and shelters.

Then director-general of police Swaranjit Sen had got the police to drive deep into the Maoist heartland and demolish their hideouts.

Andhra was the first state to use modern weapons and equipment, like GPS guiding systems, in Maoist combat. Satellite images were used to track down the guerrillas and bullet-proof vehicles to ferry the policemen. Special medical units were set up in each district to treat security personnel engaged in the offensive. The salaries of the policemen engaged in fighting the guerrilla were doubled.

Not that Sen’s boys — as he called his commandos — had no political pressure to contend with. In 2007, they were forced to release top gun Ramakrishna alias Akkiraju Hargopal and several others who had been captured in the Nallamala forests following an outcry from rights activists like Gaddar and Varavara Rao.

One way to get around such a “problem” may have been to eliminate the Maoists. Sixteen Maoist leaders have been killed in the first six months of 2010, often leading to complaints of fake encounters.

To blunt the charges, the Andhra government opened a second front, which included measures to create a sense of well-being among villagers in the rebel-hit areas.

The impoverished tribal terrain suddenly got many metalled roads, though they helped the administration move forces more than anything else.

YSR distributed around 8 lakh acres among the landless and provided rice at Rs 2 a kilo, loans to women at 3 per cent interest, Rs 2.5 lakh to the kin of farmers who committed suicide, subsidised housing and healthcare.

Over 4,000 surrendered rebels — activists as well as sympathisers — got ration cards, bank loans to start small businesses, houses and the cash award earmarked for their capture.

In early 2007, IPS officer Stephen Ravindra launched a campaign that involved interactions with the families of the Maoists in their native villages in Warangal and Karimnagar. “Many of the cadres surrendered following appeals by their family members,” said Ravindra.

The Maoists retaliated by killing IPS officer K.S. Vyas, the architect of the Greyhound force, but the commandos had by then succeeded in driving many of the guerrillas away towards Chhattisgarh.

Like the political establishments in Bengal, Bihar and Chhattisgarh, successive Andhra governments had earlier dithered on dealing with the rebels with a firm hand.

As early as 1978, M. Channa Reddy had rolled out a soft policy by withdrawing the Disturbed Areas Act. He launched a development plan, which included concessions for new industries in the extremist-infested Telangana region, but the fear of the Maoists kept investors away.

In the ’80s, Telugu Desam leader N.T. Rama Rao had called the Maoists “patriots” to win their support against the Congress. However, his development plank angered the rebels, who thought he was trying to win over their supporters.

The People’s War Group and its allied Maoist organisations were banned in 1992, but NTR withdrew the ban in 1995. His successor Chandrababu Naidu reimposed it in 1997.

It was during the Desam’s tenure that an IPS officer, H.J. Dora, launched a cultural attack on the Maoists, fighting their street plays with the government’s own praja dramas.

The ban on the guerrilla outfits was lifted in September 2004 when YSR invited the PWG for talks.

Under attack, the PWG and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) merged later that year to form the CPI (Maoist), which now has a presence in 12 states.