HYDERABAD/NAGPUR: When Mallojula Venugopal Rao joined the state public relations department in undivided Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad as an apprentice after graduation, he could not have imagined spending 35 years of his life as a Maoist outlaw.On Tuesday, as India’s five-decade battle against Left-wing extremism turned another corner, Venugopal — known by aliases Bhupathi, Sonu, Vivek and Abhay — became the face of what officials termed the dismantling of Maharashtra’s Maoist citadel.Bhupathi, who surrendered to Gadchiroli police with 61 other PLGA guerrillas, had one of the longest uninterrupted stints underground in the Maoist insurgency until fatigue from fighting a losing battle caught up with him. Six months ago, the man with a bounty of Rs 60 lakh signaled his desire for a ceasefire.Born into a Brahmin family on May 10, 1956, in Telangana’s Peddapalli, Bhupathi was pursuing a commerce degree when he was drawn to the Radical Students’ Union and People’s War Group, both breeding grounds for Left ideology in undivided Andhra Pradesh.His elder brother, Mallojula Koteshwar Rao, better known as Kishenji, went on to become one of India’s most-wanted Maoist commanders before being killed in Bengal in 2011.Bhupathi initially tried settling into a regular career before following his sibling’s path — one that took him to the Maoist central committee. He later rose to become a politburo member, central regional bureau secretary, and the CPI (Maoist)’s political chief.Operating out of Gadchiroli and Maad (Abujhmad) in Chhattisgarh, Bhupathi’s role evolved from field operations to ideological command. After Maoist spokesperson Cherukuri Rajkumar (Azad) was killed in 2010, he became the insurgency’s principal voice. “As official spokesperson, he used the alias Abhay and issued statements regularly, although his influence ran far deeper,” a senior Telangana SIB officer told TOI. “He shaped ideological discourse, guided propaganda, and oversaw the janatana sarkar — the Maoists’ parallel governance system in Dandakaranya.”Bhupathi was instrumental in running these so-called “people’s governments” in remote forest regions, blending political oversight with guerrilla control, making him CPI (Maoist)’s political brain.While heading PLGA’s central military commission, he upgraded guerrilla warfare manuals. He is accused of masterminding the 2011 Chintalnar massacre in which 76 CRPF men were killed, and of creating a rebel base within the Indravati National Park.After the death of general secretary Nambala Keshav Rao, alias Basavaraju, in May 2025, Bhupathi was seen as a natural successor. But by then, the movement was in decline — several senior functionaries were dead or captured, operations had intensified in Bastar and Gadchiroli, and cadre morale had collapsed.In internal communications later seized, Bhupathi admitted that Maoist movement was facing an “existential crisis,” blaming leadership failures & urging cadres to “rethink armed struggle.” The central committee branded him a traitor and ordered him to surrender his weapons. Officials said the pressure he faced before surrendering exposed deepening rifts within the hierarchy. In a rare development, the Maad division (North Bastar) — once a Maoist stronghold — publicly backed his call to lay down arms, signaling an unprecedented rupture and the erosion of command and conviction. within the organization.
