Bijapur and Narayanpur, Chhattisgarh: On a chilly January morning in 2025, a crooked, wooden, hand-made kayak wobbled on the wide Indravati river on its way to Tadopot village in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district, approximately 400 km south west of the state capital, Raipur.
In the village, on a clear patch of land, is a four-tiered mint coloured structure that looks like a wedding cake. It is a memorial built for Ramesh Oyam, a subsistence millet farmer from the neighbouring Bodga village, who was killed by security forces on 29 January 2024.
Oyam was approximately 24 years old, the only earning member of the family and the father of a four-day old girl, when he died.
“The memorial stands to remind us that Adivasi lives matter,” said Vinesh Podiyam, a youth leader in Abujhmad, a forested hill region, covering parts of southern Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur, Bijapur and Dantewada districts and spreading all the way up to Gadchiroli district in neighbouring Maharashtra.
Oyam was one of among about 10,000 civilians, security forces and left-wing guerrillas who have died in over more than a half century of conflict.
People from neighbouring villages wanted to gather at the memorial this January—a year after his killing—but could not, as they feared attacks from both security forces and Maoists.
“Parts of Bastar are now an active war zone,” said Gaurav Rai, superintendent of police (SP), Dantewada.
Since security forces have stepped up their offensive against left-wing guerrillas in what is India’s longest-running insurgency and Maoists continue to fight back despite record losses, Adivasis who lived around sites of four firefights told Article 14 they did not feel safe in their villages.
Some who lost family to police firing said they had refused compensation, demanding justice instead, others alleged abuses by security forces, and many said they had to be alert to the possibility of violence and death at any time.
The Indian State has been fighting the armed guerrillas for over half a century now.
The Communist Party of India (Maoist), banned in June 2009, and its military wing, the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army, aim to overthrow the Republic of India, which, they claimed in an October 2004 press statement, was a “semi-colonial, semi-feudal system”.
While there were many factions of the guerrillas, in 2004, the major factions joined hands to fight the State together, and are often just referred to as Maoists.
Southern Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, which includes the districts of Kondagaon, Kanker, Bastar, Dantewada, Sukhma, Narayanpur and Bijapur—has been a particularly violent battleground of the Maoist insurgency.
Most rebels have been cornered in the forested hills of a region called Abujhmad—spread over 4,000 sq km, more than twice the size of Delhi—cut off from the rest of the region by the wide Indravati river.
Maoists oppose extraction of vast reserves of iron ore, coal and other minerals that lie beneath the forests of Bastar, as they claim it would disrupt Adivasi interests and their way of life.
About 70% of the population of the seven districts of Bastar—a region slightly larger than the state of Kerala—are tribal, or Adivasi communities.
A New Deadline
In the mid-2000s, former prime minister Manmohan Singh called the Maoist insurgency “the single biggest internal security challenge” that India had ever faced (here, here and here). Their sway once extended to a third of India’s area.
In 2013, 76 districts in the country were “affected by left wing extremism", according to the government, along with another 106 districts that were under their ideological influence.
Since then, security forces have pushed back the Maoists, limiting their influence to a few districts of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra and Bihar.
On 6 October 2023, union home minister Amit Shah said his government was determined to end the Maoist insurgency within two years.
“Naxalism is a curse to humanity and we are resolved to uproot it in all its forms,” said Shah, who on 9 February 2025, revised that deadline to 31 March 2026.
According to data compiled by Article 14, between 2018 and 2022, more civilians (335) died than security personnel (168) and Maoists (327).
Drones, IEDs & Isolation
Throughout the two days that this reporter spent walking the forests of Abujhmad, drones used to surveille the forest villages buzzed overhead.
“If the surveillance throws up something, we are prepared for combat,” said Rai.
In this guerilla war, the rebels use a weapon that gives them the biggest advantage: improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that can be triggered from a distance.
Residents of Abujhmad’s Bodga, Rekawaya and Kummam villages claimed they did not know where the rebels had planted IEDs around their villagers.
Most villages in this region are isolated and the residents walk from one village to another due to a lack of any transportation facilities, making them vulnerable to IED blasts.
On 4 February 2025, a labourer was injured in an alleged IED blast. About a month earlier, on 6 January 2025, eight security men were killed in a similar blast in Bijapur.
“Adivasis are the ones that are killed, no matter who escalates the violence,” Podiyam told Article 14, while sitting across from Ramesh Oyam’s memorial.
A majority of Abujhmad’s population belong to the Abujhmadiya tribe, which is one of 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups—the official term for communities that depend on “hunting, gathering for food, having pre-agriculture level of technology, zero or negative growth of population and extremely low levels of literacy”.
Adivasi groups in Abujhmad mainly gather forest produce and very few families have tractors. The average literacy rate of the Bastar region was 54.40%, compared to a national rate of 72.98%, according to the 2011 census.
‘Last Phase Of The War’
In 2024, the government poured in thousands of additional security forces to fight the Maoists. The inspector general police (IGP) of the Bastar Range, Sundarraj Pattilingam, called this the “last phase of the war”.
“We had a good year in 2024, and we started very well this year as well,” Pattilingam told Article 14. In 2025, as of 10 February, more than 80 Maoists were killed, a majority of them from Bastar.
Pattilingam estimated the strength of the Maoists to be around 600 uniformed, armed cadres and about 1,500 support cadres, who do not always carry weapons. He said the number of those who support the rebels changed constantly.
On 15 December 2024, to mark one year of the current BJP government in the state, union home minister Amit Shah gave awards to the Chhattisgarh Police for their work against the guerrillas.
In his address, he said that security forces had killed 287, arrested 1,000 and facilitated the surrender of 837 Naxalites.
Shah did not refer to the deaths of allegedly innocent people in Bastar.
“Among the operations that the police conducted last year, several have affected civilians,” said Soni Sori, a Dantewada-based Adivasi activist. “Many died, and I brought several injured villagers to cities so they could get treated for their wounds.”
On 1 February 2025, a joint operation was carried out by the District Reserve Guards (DRG) special task force, the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action 202 battalion—a special operations unit of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)—and the CRPF’s 222nd battalion, in Korcholi and Todka villages of Gangalur in the southern Chhattisgarh district of Bijapur.
The DRG recruits Adivasis and former Maoists who have an edge because of their knowledge of the terrain, language and Maoist hierarchy.
The authorities claimed that an armed encounter with Maoists led to the recovery of eight bodies along with weapons. However, the civil society group Campaign for Peace and Justice in Chhattisgarh (CPJC), claimed that seven of those killed were not Maoists.
“A voter ID card belonging to Lachhu Pottam, one of the deceased, proves that he was a local resident, not an insurgent,” said a 3 February CPJC press release.
Pattilingam said that since the rebels lived in the forests, they needed the help of villagers: to bring them supplies, help them move around or sometimes provide shelter.
Many villagers who help the rebels are first recruited as ‘militia’. In the Maoist hierarchy, the militia are the most numerous, at the bottom of the pyramid.
They acted as bridges between the rebels and the outside world. Therefore, it did not mean that a person with a government-issued identity could not be a rebel, said Pattilingam.
A villager from Gangalur, who asked not to be named as he feared for his life, said that things had changed over the past year.
He said security forces had more accurate information than before about villages where Maoists were sheltering and alleged that, despite the information, they were indiscriminate about who they killed once they reached those villages.
“If they know precisely which villages which Maoist leader is hiding in, then how do they (security forces) not know who to shoot?” he asked, alleging that the security forces shoot on purpose to terrorise villagers.
A senior police officer in Bastar—speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue—agreed it was difficult to differentiate innocent civilians from Maoists. “We have gotten better, but sometimes it is still very tough,” he said. Security forces have more accurate information than they used to, according to SP Rai, because of the DRG. Several DRG members who were previously Maoists often recognise their former comrades.
“Sometimes, when we do operations in areas not close to our villages, we don’t know who is who,” said Sanju Madkam, a DRG officer, with rank equivalent to a police investigating officer. “But, we never attack indiscriminately.”
‘Mukhbirs’ & Maoists
People living in and around the forests of Abujhmad, in the districts of Bijapur, Narayanpur, Kanker, Sukma and Dantewada, said that the large scale presence of security forces in their area has increased Maoists’ suspicion that some villagers are police informants or mukhbirs.
On 27 January 2025, Maoists allegedly attacked and killed 41-year-old Bhadru Sodhi, with an axe, at his home in Bijapur’s Keshamundi village, for supposedly leaking information to the police about Maoist activities.
The police said a pamphlet, allegedly issued by Maoists, that accused Sodhi of being a “traitor”, was found at the scene.
“We are living under high pressure,” said Lalu Oyam of Rekawaya village of Abujhmad. “We know that there are police informers and there are Maoist informers in the village. The question is, who is who?”
It had become very difficult, said Lalu Oyam, for those who do not want to be a part of the violence to live in the village.
“While the Maoists kill someone who they think is a police informant, the security forces sometimes cast a wider net,” said a villager from Uspari village of Bairamgarh district, who asked not to be named for fear of being targeted.
“During an operation, they kill villagers who they suspect to be helping the rebels and not necessarily only informants” said the 32-year-old.
Ramesh Oyam, whose memorial stands in Tadopot village, was heading down a small ledge to the Indravati river for a quick bath, along with his brother-in-law, when he was killed, according to his mother Sukli Oyam.
“The force was coming after conducting an operation from Utla village on the other side of the river,” said a villager in Bodga, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They spotted Ramesh walking close to the river and perhaps thought he was alerting some rebels on this side of the river.”
Oyam’s mother said her son had nothing to do with the rebels, never carried a gun or wore the olive green uniform of the Maoist groups.
“Even in conflict zones, the State is bound by constitutional and international legal standards,” said the press release from the CPJC. “The government cannot claim to protect its citizens while simultaneously subjecting them to state-led terror under the pretext of national security.”
Why Roads Are Battlegrounds
Over the past three decades, Maoists have regularly disrupted road construction (here, here and here) in Bastar. They claimed that roads built in the region primarily cater to large trucks meant to carry minerals, such as coal and iron ore, out of the region. Some villagers agreed.
“We want small roads, enough for our motorbikes and ambulances,” said Vinesh Podiyam, the Adivasi youth leader previously quoted. “Not big ones for trucks and police vans.”
Once the roads are built, security forces follow.
“We are the precursors to development,” said IGP Pattilingam. He acknowledged that police camps were established once roads were built.
These camps are rudimentary—concrete barracks in towns and tents in forests—common toilets, canteens and an open area in the middle.
In 2024 alone, 30 new camps were built across Bastar, said Pattilingam, bringing the total to more than 250.
Nine of the new camps were set up in Abujhmad, with the 9th one beginning to function on 8 February. Over the previous two decades, only four camps were constructed in Abujhmad.
Every time a camp is established, a 50-60-km-area around the camp becomes off-limits to the Maoists, effectively stopping them from holding meetings in villages, IGP Pattilingam said. “They can’t hold meetings or recruit openly around the camps.”
Pattilingam said schools, hospitals and commercial activity follow the camps.
The Dilemma Of Development
In Bhairamgarh’s newly renovated community health center, 63-year-old local Sonu Sori pointed at the area around the hospital and said the land used to be forests not “that long ago”.
He remembered a time when Bhairamgarh was not connected by road to Geedam, a commercial hub 40 km east.
“I remember protesting against the road that connected Bhairamgarh to Geedam,” he said.
“We failed to convince the authorities, but we were right in seeking our sovereignty over our land and resources,” he said, refusing a photograph, as he feared he might be termed a Maoist for his views.
Sori acknowledged that had it not been for the road, he would not get the healthcare he was getting for his bad back and hypertension. But, he said, ownership of the natural resources that his forefathers had protected was more important to him.
Dantewada-based advocate Bela Bhatia said that Sonu Sori’s sentiment was not new. She viewed the conflict with the Maoists as a continuation of the “pre-colonial Adivasi struggle to gain sovereignty over their jal, jungle, and jameen (water, forest and land).”
One of the major projects underway in the region is national highway 130D, a road that bisects the Abujhmad forests and connects Chhattisgarh to Maharashtra.
In November 2024, the Border Roads Organisation, a road construction body under the ministry of defence, started work on two major roads in south Bastar which were “strategically important to fight the Maoists”.
These roads will also cause “large-scale deforestation”, according to Brijendra Tiwari, senior member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation or CPI(ML)L.
“As long as there is a real or perceived threat to their resources the Adivasis will fight,” Bhatia said. Even today, she added, Maoists were popularly perceived to be protectors of Adivasi interests.
Adivasi Resistance
In 2021, a group of Adivasis, many of them young people, came together and formed a group to fight for their rights under the 1996 law Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), which gives areas under Schedule 5 (majority Adivasi areas) of the Constitution autonomy over governance in their region.
The Moolvasi Bachao Manch(MBM) took the lead in asking the State to include Adivasi communities in decision making and demanded implementation of the Forest Rights Act, under which forest communities have autonomy to conduct gram sabhas, or village-level legislative bodies, to decide how forest resources, including land, should be used.
On 30 October 2024, the government banned the MBM under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005.
“They have been invoking PESA to protest against security camps coming up on their land and cutting down their forests overnight. How is that unlawful?” Nandini Sundar, author of the book The Burning Forest: India's War in Bastar, asked in a 18 November 2024 post on X.
“The language of the MBM was similar to the language used by the Maoists, that of jal jungle jameen, but they were using their constitutional right to raise questions and protest,” said Vinesh Podiyam, the youth leader. “And not picking up arms to overthrow the State.”
“In fact, if the State wants to curb the activities of an armed struggle, they should welcome the democratic protests by people,” said Bhatia, describing a ban on an organisation raising questions as a “cowardly move” by the State.
IGP Pattilingam said that the police had uncovered evidence that suggested some members of the MBM were helping the Maoists financially, which is why the organisation had to be banned. He did not specify what the evidence was.
Allegations Of State Abuses
As the union government builds roads, security camps and other infrastructure in south Chhattisgarh, resistance from some Adivasis has been intense, as Article 14 reported in February 2024
On 12 December 2024, security forces claimed to have exchanged fire with Maoists in the Kalhaja-Donderbeda forests, along the border of Narayanpur and Dantewada districts, approximately a five to six-hour trek from the banks of the Indravati river.
Seven Maoists allegedly died in the encounter. The police claimed that Ramchandra, alias Kartik, alias Dasru, a member of the Odisha state committee of Maoists, who carried a reward of Rs 25 lakh, was one among the killed.
A day later, the Maoists said that Karthik, the 62-year-old senior leader of the banned CPI (Maoist) had been unwell. He had been assigned an attendant, Ramli Madkam, who was also killed. The statement said the other five killed had nothing to do with the rebels.
Villagers of Kummam, about a two-hour trek from the official encounter site, claimed that four of those killed were working in the fields around their village and had nothing to do with the rebels. Kummam village is part of the Rekawaya panchayat of Narayanpur’s Orchha block, deep inside Abujhmad’s forests.
The police, however, say that there was crossfire with the rebels in and around Kummam village.
Late on 11 December 2024, Sunil Kumar Kashyap, a shiksha sahayak or local teacher, said that he heard security forces running uphill. He lives in Rekwaya village, downhill from Kummam. “I knew the forces were in the vicinity,” he said.
Fear & Trauma
Sitting under a tamarind tree to recount the events of that day, 19-year-old Manish Oyam from Kummam, a village of just 13 families, said that almost every household has lost a family member. He added that the community had been traumatised.
The most vocal of the villagers was Pakli Oyam, who estimated her age to be roughly 16. “Everyone ran helter-skelter,” she said, about the day the shooting took place. “Like chicken.”
“What else would you do, if you hear indiscriminate firing,” she asked. It is common practice in the forest villages to run towards the forests when they hear police firing. She hid in her home, she said.
Her father, Gudsa Oyam, who was the patel, or the head, of the village, had run into the forests, along with others, when he heard police firing. He was found dead a day later.
Her brother, Nevru Oyam’s body was found about a week later in the bushes, a short distance from the village.
“Anyone who is in the village is never targeted,” said Smruthik Rajanala, superintendent of police (operations), Dantewada, who has been a part of all the major operations in 2024.
“Where else will they run, if not into the forests?” asked Pakli Oyam, because the men of Pakli Oyam’s family were not in the village as they were farming a two-hour trek away from their house.
The Adivasis of the region follow a system of shifting cultivation known as penda kheti which involves clearing a patch of forestland every year to grow millets.
Ramli Oyam, 17, said she was in the village but fled along with three other girls, Sudri Oyam, Sunila Oyam and Tulsi Oyam, after they heard police firing.
While the three others escaped injuries, Ramli was hit with a bullet in the back of her head.
Four men from the village carried Ramli on a bamboo mat to the river. She was then transported in an ambulance, first to a hospital in Jagdalpur and then—since she needed specialist care—to a bigger hospital in the state capital Raipur.
Ever since the firing, Ramli said she found it hard to sleep. “I lay awake thinking about nothing,” she said.
All 13 families in the village have decided to sleep in one hut, said 35-year-old Aaytu Oyam, whose 18-year-old daughter Somari Oyam was killed during the firing.
“One of the men stays awake to keep vigil,” she said, adding that they took turns to sleep.
Since the firing, the villagers had not been able to work their farms, said Manish Oyam, who escaped injury that day.
“This means we will be dependent on other villagers or the government for food,” he said.
Ramli’s father, Vijja Oyam said that the villagers were seeking justice for the killing of their community members. “We are asking them to punish those who shot at us without mercy,” he said.
Punishment, Not Compensation
Across the villages we visited, the demand for commensurate punishment is uniform.
“All the families agree that we want justice first and compensation later,” said Vinesh Podiyam, the youth leader from Abujhmad.
For instance, police allegedly fired at civilians on 1 January 2024, killing a six-month-old baby girl in Mutvendi village of Bijapur district. Security forces said she died in “crossfire” during a firefight with Maoists. Villagers said only the police were firing.
The administration offered compensation in this and other cases, as Article 14 reported in February 2024. But only a few families had accepted the compensation, said Podiyam.
Raje Oyam, of Bodga village in the Bijapur district, who estimated her age to be around 60, said she was shot at by the police in March 2024.
Her neighbours carried her for several kilometers to the Bhairamgarh community healthcare center, by which time, she said, she had lost a lot of blood.
A government spokesperson told the media that members of the security forces donated blood and helped her recover.
“There was no need for them to shoot me,” Raje Oyam told Article 14. They jumped over the roof of the house, found her hiding under a ledge and shot at her, she said. She had not been able to lie on her back since the incident, said Raje Oyam.
Even though she was offered compensation, she has not made the three-hour walk to Bhairamgarh, the headquarters of the tehsil, or district sub-division, to claim it.
A kilometer away, while tending to her granddaughter, Ramesh Oyam’s mother Sukli Oyam also said she had not claimed the Rs 500,000 compensation for her son’s death.
“You have to understand that the Adivasi sense of pride is not for sale,” said Brijendra Tiwari, CPI(ML)L. “They attach more value to their freedom and sovereignty over their resources than anything else.” He added that money was not as valuable to them.
Living In A Consumption Economy
Unlike the villages of Abujhmad, Bhairamgarh has the looks of a small town transitioning from a subsistence economy to a consumption economy, where the value of currency is higher than the value of natural produce.
Varsha Kumari Kashyap used to grow millets, collect forest produce and sell tendu leaves in the wholesale markets until five years ago. “There are schools and hospitals in my town now,” she said.
But to afford better schools for her children, a house and products in the market, Kashyap had to do more. She now makes dosas on an open flame on the side of the road, under a tarpaulin sheet.
Many like Kashyap have been forced to exchange their traditional lifestyles, home and even linguistic references in trying to be a part of the unfolding economy of consumption around them.
‘To work for a living’ in local languages such as Gondi and Halbi, is different from ‘to earn money’, said Kashyap. “So, I cook in order to make money, but I work in my house to live a happy life.”
(Raksha Kumar is a journalist focusing on human rights and social justice issues.)
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