Statement on the Ongoing Security Operations Against Maoists
Jul 01, 2025By AILAJ
Over the last few months, a massive joint operation reportedly involving over 10,000 security personnel, encircled Karreguttalu hills, on the border of Telangana and Chhattisgarh, where hundreds of maoists were holed up. This came in the background of “Operation Kagar” and Home Minister Amit Shah’s deadline of March 2026 to make India Maoist-free. This situation in Karreguttalu occured despite the Maoists in Chhattisgarh having released three public statements in the past month, expressing their readiness for peace talks and calling for a halt to military operations against them. In a video interview given to Bastar Talkies, a popular YouTube channel, which was uploaded on 22 April 2025, Maoist leader, Rupesh, declared that the CPI (Maoist) party has stopped all operations except when attacked; in effect, a unilateral ceasefire. Reports suggest that 28 Maoists, including four women, have been killed in the ongoing operation in the Karreguttalu hills of Chhattisgarh. In fact, since the escalation in militarisation and intensified Operations January 2024, in Bastar alone over 400 people have been killed.
In these circumstances, concerned advocates, human rights and civil society organisations, media, and other members of the public, including AILAJ, appealed to the Union Government to cease military operations and find a peaceful resolution through talks so as to avoid any more bloodshed. Their only concern is the prevention of loss of human lives. Their understanding is that even in an insurgency, once an armed group expresses its readiness for talks to halt further bloody violence, then it is the responsibility of a government, bound by the Constitution, to ensure a resolution to the insurgency without spilling of any more blood.
Around two decades ago, the State of Chhattisgarh promoted the state-backed armed civilian militia, known as the ‘Salwa Judum’, in its fight against the Maoists. The permissibility of this reached the doors of the Supreme Court, whose judgment in the matter, reported in Nandini Sundar and Ors vs. State of Chhattisgarh [(2011) 7 SCC 547], is a scathing critique of the development paradigm and broader socio-economic conditions, fuelling the disgruntlement of the people of Chhattisgarh. Such conditions include the degradation and dispossession of Adivasi land due to mining, severe poverty and destitution of the people, and social and political marginalization. The Court deemed that we cannot turn a blind eye to these conditions of impoverishment that have been produced by an extractive model of economic development. The judgement declared ‘Salwa Judum’ unconstitutional, disapproved the government arming civilians to combat an insurgency and prohibited their deployment in counter-Maoist operations.
The fight against Maoist/Naxalite violence cannot be conducted purely as a mere law and order problem to be confronted by whatever means the State can muster. The primordial problem lies deep within the socio-economic policies pursued by the State on a society that was already endemically, and horrifically, suffering from gross inequalities. Consequently, the fight against Maoists/Naxalites is no less a fight for moral, constitutional and legal authority over the minds and hearts of our people. Our constitution provides the gridlines within which the State is to act, both to assert such authority, and also to initiate, nurture and sustain such authority. To transgress those gridlines is to act unlawfully, imperiling the moral and legal authority of the State and the Constitution. We, in this Court, are not unaware of the gravity that extremist activities pose to the citizens, and to the State. However, our Constitution, encoding eons of human wisdom, also warns us that ends do not justify all means, and that an essential and integral part of the ends to which the collective power of the people may be used to achieve has to necessarily keep the means of exercise of State power within check and constitutional bounds. To act otherwise is to act unlawfully, and as Philip Bobbitt warns, in “Terror and Consent – The Wars for the Twenty First Century”, “if we act lawlessly, we throw away the gains of effective action.” Laws cannot remain silent when the canon’s roar.
Indeed the Supreme Court holds that “modern constitutionalism posits that no wielder of power should be allowed to claim the right to perpetrate state’s violence against any one, much less its own citizens, unchecked by law, and notions of innate human dignity of every individual.”
This judgment provides a clear mandate of the manner in which the State was required to deal with the violent actions of the Maoists: the context of severe inequality matters, the ends do not justify all means, the exercise of State power ought to be within constitutional bounds, and any of its violence ought not to be against human dignity and the rights of all Indian citizens. It clarifies that this need to adhere to constitutional norms, the responsibility of every organ of the State to function within the four corners of constitutional responsibility, is the ultimate rule of law, the very foundation of governance and democratic polity. The rule of law, the guiding light and shield available to people against arbitrary executive action, is part of the basic structure of our constitutional jurisprudence, and as the Supreme Court held in Extra Judl. Exec. Victim Families Assn. and Ors. vs. Union of India [(2017) 8 SCC 417] “the protection and preservation of human rights is one of the most important aspects of the Rule of law”. In State of Maharashtra vs. Saeed Sohail Sheikh [(2012) 13 SCC 192] the issue related to the alleged high-handedness and excessive force of jail officials on prison inmates who were in custody in connection the Bombay Blast case.
Here the Supreme Court held that: “in a country governed by the rule of law police excesses whether inside or outside the jail cannot be countenanced in the name of maintaining discipline or dealing with anti-national elements. Accountability is one of the facets of the rule of law. If anyone is found to have acted in breach of law or abused his position while exercising powers that must be exercised only within the parameters of law, the breach and the abuse can be punished. That is especially so when the abuse is alleged to have been committed under the cover of authority exercised by people in uniform. Any such action is also open to critical scrutiny and examination by the Courts. Having said that we cannot ignore the fact that the country today faces challenges and threats from extremist elements operating from within and outside India. Those dealing with such elements have at times to pay a heavy price by sacrificing their lives in the discharge of their duties. The glory of the constitutional democracy that we have adopted, however, is that whatever be the challenges posed by such dark forces, the country’s commitment to the Rule of Law remains steadfast. Courts in this country have protected and would continue to protect the ideals of the rights of the citizen being inviolable except in accordance with the procedure established by law.”
In July 2016, the Supreme Court passed its judgment in regard to the alleged 1528 extra-judicial killings in Manipur, in which it made several notable observations of the standards of
conduct required of the State and its security forces while dealing with insurgency and armed resistance. In its judgment reported in Extra Judicial Execution Victim Families Association (EEVFAM) and Ors. vs. Union of India [(2016) 14 SCC 536], the Supreme Court emphatically held as follows:
… When the State uses such excessive or retaliatory force leading to death, it is referred to as an extra-judicial killing or an extra-judicial execution or as this Court put it in People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India and Anr. [(1997) 3 SCC 433] it is called “administrative liquidation”.
Society and the courts obviously cannot and do not accept such a death caused by the State since it is destructive of the Rule of law and plainly unconstitutional. The problem before the courts tends to become vexed when the victims are alleged to be militants, insurgents or terrorists. In such cases, how does anyone (including the court) assess the degree of force required in a given situation and whether it was excessive and retaliatory or not? Scrutiny by the courts in such cases leads to complaints by the State of its having to fight militants, insurgents and terrorists with one hand tied behind its back. This is not a valid criticism since, and this is important, in such cases it is not the encounter or the operation that is under scrutiny but the smoking gun that is under scrutiny. There is a qualitative difference between use of force in an operation and use of such deadly force that is akin to using a sledgehammer to kill a fly; one is an act of self-defence while the other is an act of retaliation.
Importantly, the Court makes the following emphatic statement while dealing with the State’s argument that an insurgent is an enemy of the State (as defined under the provisions of the Army Act) and hence their killing is justified in counter insurgency or anti-terrorist operations: “Killing an ‘enemy’ is not the only available solution and that is what the Geneva Conventions and the principles of international humanitarian law tell us.”
There are several key implications of this statement. First, it cautions that just because a party is deemed an ‘enemy’ (which, in any case, is a discourse subject to the geopolitical and political whims of the state in power), this does not imply that this party should not be extended basic rights under international humanitarian law. Second, the EEVFAM judgment makes a reference to Prof. Aharon Barak, a former President of the Supreme Court of Israel, “While terrorism poses difficult questions for every country, it poses especially challenging questions for democratic countries, because not every effective means is a legal means. I discussed this in one case, in which our Court held that violent interrogation of a suspected terrorist is not lawful, even if doing so may save human life by preventing impending terrorist acts: We are aware that this decision does not make it easier to deal with that reality. This is the fate of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all methods employed by its enemies are open to it. Sometimes a democracy must fight with one hand tied behind its back. Nonetheless, it has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of law and recognition of individual liberties constitute an important component of its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and strength and allow it to overcome its difficulties.”
The main issue at stake is that the actions of the State have to be compliant with the notion of human rights. The words ‘human rights’ though not defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have been defined in the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 in very broad terms and that these human rights are enforceable by courts in India. In this context, it is necessary to reiterate what the Supreme Court held in Ram Deo Chauhan v. Bani Kanta Das [(2010) 14 SCC 209]:
Human rights are the basic, inherent, immutable and inalienable rights to which a person is entitled simply by virtue of his being born a human. They are such rights which are to be made available as a matter of right. The Constitution and legislations of a civilised country recognise them since they are so quintessentially part of every human being. That is why every democratic country committed to the Rule of law put into force mechanisms for their enforcement and protection.
Human rights are universal in nature. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as UDHR) adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10-12-1948 recognises and requires the observance of certain universal rights, articulated therein, to be human rights, and these are acknowledged and accepted as equal and inalienable and necessary for the inherent dignity and development of an individual. Consequently, though the term “human rights” itself has not been defined in UDHR, the nature and content of human rights can be understood from the rights enunciated therein.
Possibly considering the wide sweep of such basic rights, the definition of “human rights” in the 1993 Act has been designedly kept very broad to encompass within it all the rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in the International Covenants and enforceable by courts in India. Thus, if a person has been guaranteed certain rights either under the Constitution or under an International Covenant or under a law, and he is denied access to such a right, then it amounts to a clear violation of his human rights and NHRC has the jurisdiction to intervene for protecting it.
Within this legal framework (of human rights), the question then is not whether or not you ‘sympathize’ or condone with the ideology or activities of the Maoists. This is beside the point. The question is one simply of basic human rights and protections afforded under the due process of the law. One could very well stand diametrically opposed to Maoist ideology and actions, while also being extremely concerned at the use of disproportionate power against them, especially when they are hemmed in the hills and repeatedly reaching out for talks.
A look at what the Courts have laid down and it is apparent that the State ought not to shy away from bloodless resolution to these issues. In the Nandini Sundar case, the Supreme Court
conceptualised the two-fold path in response to insurgency, as follows: “The response of law, to unlawful activities such as those indulged in by extremists, especially where they find their genesis in social disaffection on account of socio-economic and political conditions has to be rational within the borders of constitutional permissibility. This necessarily implies a two-fold path: (i) undertaking all those necessary socially, economically and politically remedial policies that lessen social disaffection giving rise to such extremist violence; and (ii) developing a well trained, and professional law enforcement capacities and forces that function within the limits of constitutional action.”
In the EEVFAM case, the Supreme Court, acknowledging that the insurgency in the State was ongoing for years, and the situation had not improved for decades on end, since 1958 in fact, held that: It is high time that concerted and sincere efforts are continuously made by the four stakeholders – civil society in Manipur, the insurgents, the State of Manipur and the Government of India to find a lasting and peaceful solution to the festering problem, with a little consideration from all quarters. It is never too late to bring peace and harmony in society.
If it is true that it is never too late to bring peace and harmony in our society—and it is—then the state has a moral and constitutional duty to pursue this truth—right now. This is all the more imperative since the Maoist Party seem to be ready for peace talks and have explicitly communicated so. Given that it is impermissible for the state in any of its forms (executive, state agencies, or legislature) to act with impunity, and claim that the law or the Constitution can be ignored, or complied with only at its convenience, then it is time to pursue an authentic path of resolution for the issues in this region. The state must do everything it can to stop further bloodshed, to secure accountability and democracy in the region, and to address the overall material and political disenfranchisement of the Adivasis of Chhattisgarh and elsewhere in the country.
(This piece is republished from the AILAJ E-Magazine, June 2025 Issue; Advocating for Justice and Reclaiming the Legal Space for the People, the Constitution, and a Democratic Future)