Adivasi woman, at a government hospital in Chhattisgarh after she stepped on an IED planted due to India anti-Naxalite or Maoist drive
Saraswati Oyam, an Adivasi woman, at a government hospital in Chhattisgarh after she stepped on an IED. Adivasi civilians say they are bearing grievous consequences from the Indian government’s brutal anti-Naxalite drive, while the police deny any impact on civilians. Nikita Jain

India’s deadly war on Naxalites and Adivasis in Chhattisgarh

Operation Kagar, India’s escalating anti-Naxalite campaign in Chhattisgarh, leaves Adivasis reeling from repression, displacement, killings and other violence by state authorities and security forces

Nikita Jain is a Delhi-based journalist with almost a decade of experience. She has covered issues including gender, conflict, politics, the environment and human rights in India. She won Laadli Media Award in 2022 and 2023.

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SPREAD OVER 4000 square kilometres in the south of the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, Abujhmarh is a hilly forest area covering three major districts – Narayanpur, Bijapur and Dantewada. It is home to several Adivasi communities, including the Gond, Muria, Abujhmarhia, Madiya and Halba tribes. India’s 2011 Census puts the Adivasi population in Chhattisgarh about a third of the state’s 25.5 million people. The area remains highly militarised as it is a hub for the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency, led by the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). 

In recent months, Chhattisgarh is witnessing a massive crackdown, led by Indian security forces, called Operation Kagar – “Final Mission”. Operation Kagar has four strategic goals: establishing paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) bases across Bastar, a hotspot of the insurgency that includes the Abujhmarh forest; deploying drones and satellite imaging for intelligence-gathering; setting up over 612 Fortified Police Stations on territory reclaimed from insurgents; and implementing a “surrender policy”, under which a reported 7500 Naxalites have already surrendered over the past decade. 

But Operation Kagar has come at a heavy cost, including for Adivasis. 

On 17 April, the CPI (Maoist) issued a public statement, with its North-West sub-zonal bureau calling for a one-month ceasefire and the formation of a joint representative committee comprising state officials and Maoist leaders to pave the way for a “permanent solution”. 

The CPI (Maoist) criticised ongoing security operations in the Kanker, Bijapur and Sukma districts in southern Chhattisgarh, even after the party had said it was open to peace talks. It added that Adivasi civilians were reportedly killed on 12 and 16 April.


On 24 April, in a memorandum addressed to India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, more than 300 people expressed alarm over escalating counter-insurgency operations in Bastar, as well as in Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, West Singhbhum in Jharkhand and other areas. The memorandum warned that the Indian government’s anti-Naxalite drive put Adivasi lives “under immediate and unprecedented threat” and called for action from the president, herself an Adivasi woman. 

The violence only escalated further on 21 May, with a fierce gunfight in Narayanpur leading to the killing of Nambala Keshava Rao, alias Basavaraju, the general secretary of the CPI (Maoist), as well as Sajja Venkata Nageswara Rao, the editor of the Naxalite magazine Awam-e-Jung, and about 26 others. 

After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which also heads India’s ruling national government, was elected to power in Chhattisgarh in a state election in November 2023, there has been an escalation in killings, clampdowns on civilian protests and unsustainable development projects in the state. Community development organisations have called Operation Kagar a war “waged against innocent adivasis,” even as the Indian government continues to claim the counterinsurgency operations have been a success. Leading those claims is Amit Shah, the country’s home minister and the right-hand man of the prime minister, the BJP’s Narendra Modi.

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a website tracking militancy across the region, 500 Naxalites have surrendered to the police in 2025. Around 228 Naxalites have been killed in Chhattisgarh this year as of May, going by the website’s count, with government leaders putting the number even higher. After a visit to Chhattisgarh in April, Shah announced that security forces had killed 287 Naxalites, including 14 top leaders. He also said they had arrested 1000 people, and facilitated 837 surrenders in one year. 

The escalation is staggering. In 2023, by comparison, just 23 Naxalites were reportedly killed in the state. The current surge in killings directly correlates with a bounty system, with rewards of up to INR 25 lakh – around USD 29,000 – sometimes being offered to security personnel per Naxalite killed.

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