T wo hundred rupees, one bedsheet and a dhoti : Later, Gouthu Latchanna would tell the villagers at a People’s Court that the police had paid him to guide them to a hideout near Kummarikunta one winter night. The six Maoist insurgents police had captured, he said, were marched a short distance and then shot in the back. Two guns, a bag of bombs and a radio were displayed as recoveries; 10 others escaped into the darkness. “The cadre are getting frustrated and are scared,” a Maoist squad commander wrote in his diary after the killings . “Even I am scared. To give others courage, I do not show my fear.”

Earlier this week, the Lok Sabha received a stark accounting of the near-collapse of the once-powerful Maoist insurgency: since 2019, 1,106 cadres have been killed, 7,3

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