HYDERABAD/NAGPUR: When Mallojula Venugopal Rao joined the public relations department in undivided Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad as an apprentice after graduation, few could have foreseen that he would spend the next three-and-a-half decades as one of India’s most enduring Maoist leaders.
On Tuesday, Venugopal — better known by his aliases Bhupathi, Sonu, Vivek, and Abhay — surrendered to Gadchiroli police along with 61 PLGA guerrillas, marking what officials described as a key moment in the dismantling of Maharashtra’s Maoist stronghold.
Once a quiet government apprentice, Bhupathi went on to become the CPI (Maoist)’s political chief, ideologue, and principal spokesperson — a figure who shaped the movement’s propaganda and internal discourse for years.
Born on May 10, 1956, in Peddapalli, Telangana, into a Brahmin family, Bhupathi was pursuing a commerce degree when he was drawn into Left-wing politics through the Radical Students’ Union and the People’s War Group (PWG) — both incubators of Naxalite thought in the 1970s and 80s. His elder brother, Mallojula Koteshwar Rao, known as Kishenji, became one of India’s most-wanted Maoist commanders before being killed in West Bengal in 2011.
Initially attempting a conventional career, Bhupathi soon followed in his brother’s footsteps, rising through the ranks to become a Politburo member, central regional bureau secretary, and eventually head of CPI (Maoist)’s political wing.
Operating largely out of Gadchiroli and Maad (Abujhmad) in Chhattisgarh, Bhupathi transitioned from field operations to ideological leadership. After the death of Maoist spokesperson Cherukuri Rajkumar (Azad) in 2010, he took over as the movement’s official voice under the alias Abhay, issuing statements and framing the organisation’s public position.
A senior Telangana SIB officer said, “He was not just a spokesperson — he was the brain behind Maoist political strategy, propaganda, and the so-called janatana sarkar governance in Dandakaranya.”
As head of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA)’s central military commission, Bhupathi is accused of revising guerrilla warfare tactics and masterminding the 2011 Chintalnar massacre, in which 76 CRPF personnel were killed. He also played a key role in establishing a rebel base within Indravati National Park.
By 2025, following the death of general secretary Nambala Keshav Rao (Basavaraju), Bhupathi was seen as a possible successor. But the Maoist movement was already in steep decline — senior leaders were dead or captured, operations in Bastar and Gadchiroli had intensified, and cadre morale was collapsing.
In internal communications later seized by security agencies, Bhupathi acknowledged that the Maoist movement was in an “existential crisis,” citing leadership failures and urging cadres to “rethink armed struggle.” The central committee branded him a traitor and ordered him to surrender his weapons.
Officials said the internal backlash revealed deep fissures within the organisation. Remarkably, the Maad division (North Bastar) — once a Maoist bastion — sided with Bhupathi’s call to lay down arms, signalling a historic fracture within the insurgency.
With his surrender, the man once seen as the Maoist movement’s political conscience may have delivered its most telling admission yet — that after decades of rebellion, the revolution itself had lost its purpose.
