A senior police official who was involved in the anti-naxal operation that ended up killing Maoist leader Chalapathi said that he was the person who led the Maoist attack in Odisha's Nayagarh district in 2008 in which 13 security personnel were killed.
Influential Maoist leader who actively operated and led the 2008 Maoist attack in 2008, Chalapathi was untraceble for decades until the police found a selfie of him with his wife in a mobile phone from a gunfight site. Security forces offered a bounty of Rs 1 crore on his head and ultimately the man was killed by an anti-naxal operation at the Odisha-Chhattisgarh border earlier this week.
Chalapathi was also known as Ramachandra Reddy and he was killed with thirteen others during the operation.
A senior police official who was involved in the anti-naxal operation that ended up killing Maoist leader Chalapathi said that he was the person who led the Maoist attack in Odisha's Nayagarh district in 2008 in which 13 security personnel were killed.
Chalapathi reportedly ensured that police reinforcements could not enter Nayagarh when the attack on the armoury was underway. The Maoists had blocked all roads leading to the town with massive tree trunks.
Chalapathi hailed from Andhra Pradesh's Chittoor district, where Maoist activities have ended now and was mainly active in Chhattisgarh and Odisha.
As per reports, over the last few years, he had been staying in Darabha in Chhattishgarh's Bastar district as he couldn't travel much due to problems with his knees. He was in his mid-60s.
Chalapati joined the banned People's War Group (PWG), which was wreaking havoc in some southern states, in his early years. He did not go to school, but he was a voracious reader, fluent in Telugu, Hindi, English and Odia.
He was considered an expert in military tactics and guerrilla warfare, officials told PTI.
After the CPI(Maoist) was formed in 2004 with the merger of multiple underground Communist groups, including PWG, he started rising through the ranks, and became a member of the outfit's central committee, they said.
It was Chalapathi who set up Maoist operations in Odisha's backward Kandhamal and Kalahandi districts, expanding the network.
However, his attempt to loot another police armoury in Kandhamal district was foiled by the police in 2011, officials said.
During his life in the forests, Chalapathi got close to Aruna alias Chaitanya Venkat Ravi, a 'deputy commander' of the Andhra Odisha Border Special Zonal Committee (AOBSZC). Subsequently, they got married.
Chalapathi was very hard to locate over the years and it was a mystery for the security agencies but a selfie with his wife Aruna led to his identification and a bounty of Rs 1 crore on his head.
This selfie of the couple was found in an abandoned smartphone that was recovered in May 2016 following a gunfight between Maoists and security forces in Andhra Pradesh, PTI repored.
This also restricted his movement, and forced him to travel with a dozen cadres guarding him.
The security forces were finally able to locate him and in a gunfight they killed thirteen Maoists along with Chalapathi at the Chhattisgarh-Odisha border.
Two of them were gunned down on Monday morning, police said.
Another round of gunfight began late Monday night and continued till the early hours of Tuesday, in which 12 more Maoists were killed, they added.