When Home Minister Amit Shah declared in 2024 that the Maoist insurgency would be wiped out by March 31, 2026, few people believed it. He was so confident that he rejected civic society's pleas for a ceasefire and talks with the armed militia fighting to change the system. Though the Communist Party of India (Maoist) lost much of its ground as many of its fighters were killed or forced to surrender, it was still a force to reckon with, hundreds of committed fighters ready to sacrifice their life to implement what they believed would change the system and bring exploitation to an end. During its "peak" in the early 2000s, the Naxalites, as they are called, controlled "large swathes of the country, known as the 'red corridor' spread over more than 125 districts in 10 states", with more than

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