Mumbai: On May 21, Union home minister Amit Shah announced a “landmark achievement” – that of the killing of Nambala Keshava Rao, alias Basavaraju, the general secretary of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), the outfit’s topmost leader, as part of ‘Operation Black Forest,’ the Indian security forces’ military operation against the armed rebels.Rao, along with 26 others, was killed in the inaccessible Abujhmad forests of Narayanpur district in Chhattisgarh. Shah also announced that 54 more individuals were arrested and 84 rebels had surrendered in the red corridor region across Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Maharashtra.This was the first, and perhaps the only, official information that the families of those killed had received. Rao’s brother and a few family members immediately set out from his hometown of Jiyyannapet in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh, and reached Narayanpur the next morning (May 22). This journey, they shared, was undertaken against the wishes of the local district police superintendent, who “did not want the Maoist leader’s body brought to Andhra Pradesh.” “We were stopped even before we could begin our journey to Narayanpur,” said Rao’s younger brother, Nambala Ramprasad.On May 22, as his family reached Narayanpur, members began receiving incessant phone calls urging them to return to their hometown. With no other option, Rao’s family members made the long journey back. At this juncture, Rao’s family, along with the family of another deceased leader, Sajja Venkata Nageswara Rao, approached the Andhra Pradesh high court seeking custody of the bodies to conduct funerals in their hometown. The Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh governments had agreed to hand over the bodies as soon as the postmortems were completed.The families of those killed had since been camping outside the Narayanpur district hospital, furnishing documents to prove their blood relationship with the deceased and demanding the bodies be handed over to them. Six days after the killings, and two days after the court order, the Chhattisgarh police proceeded to cremate the bodies in Narayanpur against the wishes of the families.“For over three decades, since he (Sajja Venkata Nageswara Rao) joined the movement, we haven’t seen him. We hoped we would at least get to see his body and give him a dignified farewell,” said a family member of Nageswara Rao. Originally from Jandrapet village in Chirala mandal of Bapatla district, Nageswara Rao was only 17 when he left home to join the armed movement 31 years ago. Nageswara Rao, known by his aliases Rajanna, Yesanna, and Naveen, headed the press unit of the party in the Dandakaryana special zonal committee. He, the police claim, ran a party publication called Awam-e-Jung.Similarly, Keshava Rao had joined the movement around 50 years ago. He became active in the party in the early 1970s. He was then pursuing a BTech at the then-prestigious Regional Engineering College (REC) at Warangal (now known as NIT Warangal) and worked with the party as its overground member. He was part of the Srikakulam movement then. Keshava Rao was still pursuing his master’s degree when he decided to go underground. Keshava Rao was 70 at the time of his death.Of the 27 dead persons, the families of five had reached Narayanpur. The police claim that the bodies of 20 persons were handed over to the families. Despite the families of both Keshava Rao and Nageswara Rao camping at the hospital, the police claimed that since no legal claimants came forward, the bodies of “disowned and unclaimed” Maoists were cremated.Human rights lawyer Bela Bhatia, who was present at the hospital with the families, has been periodically sharing videos of the families and the struggles they had to endure to claim the bodies. In those videos, the families could be seen repeatedly mentioning that both the local Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh governments were refusing them the bodies. The families also alleged that the bodies were not kept in cold storage and were left exposed to decay.The Coordination Committee for Peace (CCP), an initiative comprising academics, human rights advocates, and social activists, formed following the security forces’ indiscriminate killing of armed rebels and several hundred Adivasi villagers in recent months, said the mishandling of the bodies “amounts to a gross violation of medico-legal protocols, dehumanisation of the deceased, and the infliction of further psychological trauma upon grieving families.”Around noon on May 26, as the families continued to wait for the bodies, they were asked to furnish their documents. A little later, the cops told the families that the bodies couldn’t be moved from the mortuary and that the cremation would have to be carried out in Narayanpur. The initial response of the families was disbelief. They had come equipped with the high court’s order, after all. But by evening, the seven bodies were lined up, and the pyres were lit.Inspector General of Police (Bastar Range) P. Sundarraj told the media that while the individuals who had come forward to claim the bodies produced their own documents, they were not able to establish relationships with those killed. “Even a certificate from the Sarpanch of the village concerned could have sufficed, but they did not have one,” Sundarraj is quoted as having told The Hindu.The May 21 killing is one of the deadliest operations by the government. The operation, although supervised by the Central Reserve Police Force, was fought by the District Reserve Guard (DRG) team of the Chhattisgarh police. The special force, formed a decade ago to fight left-wing extremism, essentially comprises local tribal men and women, many of whom had been part of the armed movement at some point. Critics have pointed out that the DRG is merely a newer version of the controversial Salwa Judum, a counterinsurgency militia of Adivasi villagers and surrendered Maoists backed by the security forces. For a long time, the security forces have deployed Adivasi men and women to fight against their own community.The 50-hour-long operation killed the banned organisation’s senior leaders. On May 25, the Maoist party released a three-page response to the operation. They accused surrendered party members, who had been closely moving with Keshava Rao, especially in the past six months in Abujhmad, of leaking intelligence to the security forces.The letter released by Maoists.One of the reasons why both the Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh governments didn’t want the families to take the bodies back to their villages was the possible memorialisation of the leaders in the region, which could attract more people to the weakening movement. The Maoist organisation, in its statement, has urged people to organise “shahid sabha (martyrs’ gatherings)” across the country.After top Maoist leader Muppala Lakshmana Rao, alias Ganapathi, decided to step down in 2018 owing to his failing health, Keshava Rao, who was then his second-in-command, had taken over the charge. In the past 50 years, Keshava Rao came into contact with the police only twice. Once, when he had just joined the underground movement, he was arrested and sent to Visakhapatnam central jail for a few months. As soon as he was released on bail, he went underground again. Years later, sometime in 1987, an ambush was laid to capture him in the Maddilapalem region in Visakhapatnam. Keshava Rao managed to escape.