Jharkhand: Maoist leader carrying Rs 1 crore bounty killed in gunfight with security forces

A Maoist leader carrying a reward of Rs 1 crore on his head was killed in a gunfight with security forces in Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district on Monday morning, PTI quoted an unidentified official as saying.

The body of Sahadev Soren, a member of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), was recovered along with that of two other suspected Maoists killed in the gunfight, the news agency quoted the police as saying.

On September 7, another Maoist commander, Amit Hansda alias Upton, was killed in a gunfight with security forces in West Singhbhum district.

Hansda, a zonal commander of the CPI (Maoist), reportedly carried a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head.

Till July, 21 suspected Maoists have been killed across Jharkhand in 14 gunfights with security forces, The New Indian Express reported.

In the Bastar region of neighbouring Chhattisgarh, more than 400 suspected Maoists had been killed in 2024-’25, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai had said in June.

In 2024, 217 suspected Maoists were killed by security forces across Chhattisgarh.

Malini Subramaniam has reported for Scroll that while many of those killed in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region in 2024 were declared by the police to be reward-carrying Maoists, several families dispute the claim. The families claim that the persons killed were civilians.

The Union government has repeatedly vowed to end Maoism by March 31, 2026.
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