India's decades-long Maoist insurgency has been dealt a series of crushing blows, with security forces killing the top leader of the banned CPI (Maoist) — Nambala Keshava Rao — in an encounter in Chhattisgarh's Abujmarh forest region in May 2025, followed by the surrender of his successor, Thippiri Tirupati, in early 2026. The CPI (Maoist) (a far-left armed group that has waged a violent insurgency across India's tribal heartland for roughly five decades) has lost most of its Central Committee leadership to killings or arrests, leaving the organisation largely without direction. Home Minister Amit Shah had set a deadline of March 31, 2026 to end the insurgency, and the rapid unravelling of the group's command structure has prompted debate over whether the movement can now be considered effectively finished.