For nearly three decades, the name Madvi Hidma had resonated the forests of. Bastar. On Tuesday, , the Maoists’ most feared battlefield commander and their only tribal leader to rise from child recruit to the organisation’s top decision-making bodies, was killed in staged or fake encounter with the Andhra Pradesh Police. With him fell his wife Rajakka and four of his closest fighters, Hidma chronicled an era of ambushes that shook India's internal security history.
On basis of information given by an informer, the Greyhound Forces abducted six Maoist rebels including Hidma in East Godavari area of Alluri Sitarama district, at Papikonda national park,in Andhra Pradesh. They were tortured and killed in Maredu Milli forest. The killing is a gross violation of the Geneva convention and the non -International armed conflict.
His death, was a mortal blow to the CPI (Maoist), not merely because he was an astute tactician responsible for the most mortal blows on security forces, but because he was a major inspirational figure. It symbolises not just the life of one man, but of an entire generation shaped by furnace of class struggle and the extinguishing of Adivasi resistance.
If Basavaraju, the Maoist General Secretary killed in May, symbolised the ideological framework of the movement, Hidma showcased its military core in Bastar Although the Maoists appointed Devuji as General Secretary after Basavaraju’s death it was Hidma who engineered key operational decisions.
Background of Hidma
Hidma’s saga traces it’s roots in Puvarti, a tiny village on the Sukma–Bijapur border that until a few years ago was considered impenetrable Maoist terrain. Recruited in 1991 as a Bal Sangham cadre — a child fighter — by senior leaders Ramanna and Badranna, he evolved entirely inside the movement. A wiry tribal man in his thirties or forties, a thin moustache, usually carrying an AK-47. His name too shifted — “Mandavi” in some records, “Madvi” in others — adding to the confusion surrounding him.
But within the Maoist ranks, especially among the local tribal cadre, it was all clear. Hidma was theirs — a Bastar boy who had not only escalated through the system but overcame and captured it. In a leadership dominated by Telugu-speaking ideological veterans from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, he was the rare exception.
Hidma, who had trod on the same forests as them, who spoke their dialects, and who rose despite the cultural gap, became their role model.
Major Operations executed by Hidma
After a brief stint in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat region in 2002, he returned to Bastar and, by 2004, had become secretary of the Konta Area Committee. Three years later, he was commander of Company No. 3. In 2009, he was appointed deputy commander of the Maoists’ most lethal fighting force — PLGA Battalion No. 1 — and within the year, its chief.
Between 2009 and 2021, as Battalion No. 1’s commander, he orchestrated the deadliest phase of the insurgency. His attacks didn’t merely kill soldiers — they shook the morale of the security establishment, altered counter-insurgency strategies, and briefly resurrected a movement that was otherwise steadily diminishing ideologically.
Among the attacks attributed to him:
Tadmetla (2010): 76 CRPF personnel killed
Bankupara (2017): 12 CRPF jawans killed
Burkapal (2017): 25 CRPF personnel killed
Minpa–Burkapal (2020): 17 personnel killed
Tekulgudem–Pedagelur (2021): 22 DRG, STF and CoBRA personnel killed
To weigh his loss, one must rewind to Tadmetla in 2010, where 76 CRPF personnel were slaughtered in an ambush so meticulously crafted that senior officers still refer to it as "the day the jungle swallowed a battalion."
It was Hidma's debut on the national map as a lean, little-known company commander who engineered an attack that stunned even seasoned anti-Naxal strategists. and marked the crowning of a new Maoist hero.
he Jhiram Valley attack of 2013, perhaps the most shocking political assassination in the state's history, further triggered Hidma’s rise. On that blood-soaked afternoon, several of Chhattisgarh's top Congress leaders, including Mahendra Karma, Nand Kumar Patel, and others, were eliminated in a merciless operation executed with surgical precision. This was a turning pint in the Dandakaranya armed movement.
The ease with which the Maoists executed that ambush elevated him from the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee into the Maoist Central Committee, a rare achievement for someone not from Telangana, the party's traditional power base. This elevation came after discontent brewed over Telugu dominance., bowing to tribal pressure.
From there, Hidma's battalion turned into the spearhead of Maoist operations across South Bastar in Bijapur, Sukma, Dantewada and beyond. His men moved like ghosts; his ambushes were hand engineered traps; his understanding of jungle warfare stupendous.
In 2017, his death-defying courage resurrected in the Burkapal attack, where 25 CRPF jawans were killed. In Minpa, the Tekulguda ambush left 21 soldiers martyred, reaffirming the grim truth security forces experienced for years: when blood spilled in Bastar, Hidma's presence was almost an inevitability.
Mastery in manoeuvring Escapes
This year’s Karegutta Hills operations, involving nearly 25,000 personnel in the largest counter-Maoist deployment in decades aimed to corner him. Thirty-one Maoists were killed. Hidma escaped yet again.
.He always travelled with three concentric security rings, rarely used roads, and shifted rapidly through dense forested slopes, streams and nullahs. The lack of phone networks meant that even when intelligence was accurate, it was already several hours old by the time security forces acted.
As a senior officer put it once: “Even when we knew exactly where he was, we often couldn’t get there quickly enough.”
Characteristics of Hidma
Hidma was characterised as a man who planned painstakingly, diagnosed terrain like a map attached into his palm, and stood ice-cool in adversity. He was a concoction of tenacity, creativity, passion and craftiness. His military skill transcended mythical realms Rare to find Maoist leaders equally adept in engineering military operations to inflict mortal blows to the enemy and more skilled in moving like fish in water. Hidma’s organisational work stands as testament to resurrect armed resistance from the depths of despair and continuously experimenting with new methods.
Hidma was quick-footed, sharp, and absorbed guerrilla training in no time. He learned to sing revolutionary songs, use traditional instruments, administer first aid, prepare herbal medicines, and read the jungle like scripture. He was married even before joining the outfit, and after rising through its ranks, married again, his second wife, Rajakka, often accompanying him on operations.
Contrary to many rumours, Hidma did not speak fluent English; he communicated in Gondi, Halbi, Hindi, Telugu, and a bit of Marathi from his posting in Gadchiroli.
What he lacked in formal education, he compensated for with mastery of technology. Former associates say he always carried a tablet, a mobile phone, and sometimes a camera or laptop. He filmed every ambush, recording the position of every fighter, every bullet, every mistake, turning the Maoist camp into a laboratory and school of blood and strategy.
Former cadres said he was hard on security forces but treated his soldiers with respect and compassion, unlike many Maoist leaders. He laughed with them, cooked for them, performed rituals with them, and still steered them into the deadliest ambushes India has ever witnessed.
Human Rights Deny crossfire and assert Murder
Adivasi activists, categorically reject the official version. “This was not an encounter or crossfire. Hidma was murdered, plain and simple,” Adivasi activist Soni Sori told TNM, adding that his killing must be read within the larger history of state violence in Bastar.
Human rights activist Degree Prasad Chouhan said that if the security forces wanted to, they could have arrested Hidma, his wife, and the other Maoists, and produced them before a court of law. “But they didn’t. The way Hidma was killed is also often how several innocent Adivasis get killed,” he said. He added that evaluating the Maoist movement and its use of violence is fair, but so is scrutinising the state's methods. “In a constitutional democracy, one can disagree with Hidma and the Maoist movement at large, but the state’s violent excesses need to be questioned here,” he said.
Soni said Hidma’s
decision to take up arms was linked to the struggle for jal, jangal,
jameen — the assertion of Adivasi rights over the water, forests,
and land. For years, she alleged, these resources have been taken
over by government and corporate interests without the consent of the
local population. She argued that Hidma was seen by many Adivasi
people as fighting for their rights.
Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist Thanks information from Indian express, ndtv.com, the newsminute.com
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