3 min readHyderabadUpdated: Feb 7, 2026 01:13 PM IST
Maoist leader L Prabhakar Rao, who was killed on Friday in an operation by security forces along the Maharashtra-Telangana border, was a senior leader in the CPI (Maoist) Gadchiroli hierarchy. Known by aliases such as Ravi, Swamy, and Chander, Rao, 53, hailed from Isrojiwadi village in Kamareddy district of Telangana.
He, like many others from Telangana, went underground around 1995 after being active in the Radical Students Union (RSU) for a few months. Until recently, Rao was close to Maoist ideologue Mallojula Venugopal Rao, who surrendered before the Maharashtra Police last October.
Sources said he spent most of his career as an ambush strategist in Gadchiroli in Maharashtra and Abujmarh in Chhattisgarh. He used to lead ambushes against security forces, and quickly rose through the ranks.
He was the head of the West Sub-Zonal Bureau of the Gadhchiroli Division Committee and the feared armed unit ‘Company 10’. He was also associated with the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA). He is accused of leading dozens of ambushes on security personnel in the Gadchiroli region in recent years and was carrying a reward of Rs 25 lakh. Officers who worked in anti-Maoist units say his elimination is a “huge success”.
Sources said Venugopal Rao had convinced Prabhakar Rao to surrender, but the latter decided against it at the last minute, telling him that he wanted to continue the armed struggle. Last December, another top Maoist leader from Telangana, Paka Hanumanthu alias Ganesh alias Chamru, was killed in an encounter in Odisha.
Last year, several senior leaders from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were eliminated in operations by security forces, mainly in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Odisha, including former General Secretary Nambala Keshav Rao alias Basvaraj, and Central Committee members Katta Ramachandra Reddy, Kadari Satyanarayana Reddy, Gajarla Ravi, Chalpathi, Sahdev Soren, Balkrishna, Narasimha, and Chalam.
Hundreds of cadres from the two Telugu states have also been eliminated or have surrendered. Another senior Telugu Maoist leader, Thippiri Tirupathi alias Devuji, also from Telangana and the general secretary of the banned CPI (Maoist), remains on the run, and has refused repeated calls to surrender. Surrounded by relentless operations by security forces, those who still remain underground are holding up in small pockets in Gadchiroli, Dandakaranya, and Bastar.
