India’s Modi says armed Maoists are fading, but warns threat remains from ideological supporters

NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday that India’s decades-long Maoist insurgency was nearing its end but warned that the country now faced a new battle against what he called “dimagi Naxals,” or people who align with the movement’s ideology.

In his address to the nation on India’s 79th Independence Day from the ramparts of New Delhi’s 17th-century Mughal-era Red Fort, Modi said Maoist violence was “breathing its last” after years of security operations against the insurgency, once described by Indian authorities as the country’s biggest internal security threat.

Also known as the Naxalite movement, it challenged state authority across large swaths of central and eastern India for decades, leaving thousands of civilians, rebels and security personnel dead.

“We have succeeded in getting rid of armed Naxals in the jungles, but ‘dimagi Naxals’ (intellectual Naxals) are looking for opportunities to create violence and unrest,” Modi said. “They have to be identified and isolated.”