And then there were seven in the silent hills

Madvi Kamini has spent much of her life listening to the forest.

For years, its silence was never reassuring. The dense foliage around her home in the Karreguttalu Hills could conceal Maoist cadres, security forces or landmines buried beneath the paths. Every knock, every unfamiliar movement and every journey beyond Pamunuru village in Mulugu district carried the possibility of danger.

The ‘annalu’ (Naxals), as the people of Pamunuru called them, would arrive at their homes with a message that was both familiar and cautionary: “Manchiga bathakandi. Maa gurinchi police laku cheppakandi. Memu mee kosame unnām. (Live well. Don’t tell the police about us; we are here for you.)”

There was, however, little comfort in those words. The villagers had spent years caught between the Maoists and the police, fearing they could be killed by the former, targeted by the latter or arrested on suspicion of helping the banned outfit. “Many were arrested and spent over a year in jail too,” Kamini recalls.

Now, sitting behind a makeshift fence woven from branches outside her modest mud-and-wood home, Kamini, a mother of three, watches a different kind of change unfold. A bumpy mud road leads into the village. Seven houses sit amid the forest, each with a small national flag fluttering outside — something earlier disallowed by the Red Army. A newly opened CRPF Forward Operating Base, at 342 metres above sea level, stands nearby. Soon, the villagers expect electricity too.

It is a striking transformation for a place where, for decades, the Maoists held sway and the State struggled to establish a presence. “For decades, we were caught between the Maoists and the police. Now, we are free from both,” says Kamini.

Her story is also the story of the Karreguttalu Hills, a rugged, densely forested stretch along the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border that once served as a Maoist stronghold but is now being opened up by roads and security forces after years of conflict.

With the help of the district administration and the CRPF, the police have laid a 33.5-km road from Murumuru to Tadapala village across the hills in a carefully executed road-opening operation through terrain heavily infested with landmines. The operation lasted nearly six months, and the road now extends to Tadapala, the last village on the border.

More than half a dozen villages, including Pamunuru, Jella, Doli, Tadapala and Chelimela, once existed across the Karreguttalu Hills, which stretch 55 km in length and 30 km in breadth. Today, only Pamunuru in Venkatapuram mandal remains inhabited.

Many villagers have either descended from the hills and settled in Venkatapuram mandal or moved to Chhattisgarh, some voluntarily and others after being forced out by the police, who suspected them of being Maoist militia members, informants or those involved in planting landmines.

“Forget about laying a road, we always thought of entering Karreguttalu as a one-way trip to death. Maoists could ambush us, as they did in May 2025, when three personnel of the Greyhounds, the Telangana police’s elite anti-Naxal force, were killed. Their weapons were also taken away,” a police officer says.

After 2003, the Maoists began using Karreguttalu more extensively as a corridor between the Telangana plains and Dandakaranya, for press operations, meetings and supply dumps. A former Central Committee member says the area’s limited human movement and, at the time, absence of a communication network made it difficult for security forces to penetrate.

Mulugu Superintendent of Police Sudhir Ramnath Kekan describes the Karreguttalu Hills as a Maoist-free area today. He has visited parts of the hills that had remained inaccessible to security forces and forest officials for more than four decades.

“It was a safe haven for them. It was their bastion. They were confident nobody would enter the jungles and reach them. That changed with Operation Kagar, after which their guns fell silent,” he says. “Now, we dominate the area. The main idea was to dominate, stabilise and develop the area.”

Then Telangana Director General of Police B. Shivadhar Reddy became the first police chief of the State, and even of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, to land on the hills on April 7 this year and interact with the people at Pamunuru.

But reclaiming the hills came with its own dangers. For the security forces opening the road, the biggest challenge was the extensive network of landmines laid by the Maoists.

Kekan says more than 200 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and pressure mines were unearthed and defused while laying the 33.5-km road. Security forces also found 200 to 250 manholes near the road, in which armed cadres hid during the operation.

“The area was first sanitised using bomb detectors. Karreguttalu is one of the most challenging terrains,” adds Kekan, a 2018-batch IPS officer.

The IEDs were the Maoists’ principal line of defence. Even now, an estimated 400 to 500 active pressure mines remain scattered across the hills, he shares.

During Operation Kagar, they say, they could hear bombing and gunfire through the day and night for weeks. Security forces warned them not to step out of their homes while the Maoists cautioned them about landmines, asking them not to venture unnecessarily into the dense forest.

The 23 people living in Pamunuru’s seven houses, including nine men, six women and eight children, belong to the Muria community, an indigenous Adivasi Scheduled Tribe that originally hails from the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh.

Decades ago, the families migrated across the border in search of land for subsistence farming as their share of land in Chhattisgarh dwindled with expanding families. The border is a distinction they are neither aware of nor concerned about.

In Telangana, Murias are commonly referred to as Gutti Koyas, a term that offends many who feel it erases their original identity. Officials and experts say the hills were earlier inhabited by the Dorla, also known as Koya, a local tribal community. As Murias migrated from across the border, the Dorlas gradually moved to the plains.

“It is an unending cultural and identity debate. While the Muria population is around 7,000, Dorlas number around 60,000 to 70,000,” says an officer.

Between 1992 and 1998, the Dorlas moved down to avoid further conflict with the Murias. Jella, Doli and Tadapala each had four to five Muria families. They were allegedly asked to return to Chhattisgarh between 2021 and 2023 for supporting Maoist activities and sharing information about security-force movements. All three villages are now empty.

Sitting under a tree, Bheemaiah Madavi, among the first members of his tribe to migrate from Dabba in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district, recalls a life that has changed little over four decades. He does not know his exact age, has no Aadhaar card and has never benefited from any government welfare scheme. He first moved to Jella before migrating to Pamunuru, barely six kilometres away.

“The Naxals would come every month and take away our rice, pulses and other provisions. But we never told the police because we feared they would kill us. Now, life is completely different and peaceful. We have a road, a bike, an autorickshaw, and a water tank in the village. Soon, we will get electricity, and other development will follow,” he says in broken Telugu heavily influenced by Gondi/Koya.

Like Bheemaiah, most villagers, except one or two in their 20s, do not know their exact age. They do not even keep track of how much they cultivate.

“We cultivate as much as we can or want. This forest is ours, and so is the land. We sell the surplus produce at the Venkatapuram market,” says Madakam Deva, whose two children live in Kamalapuram near Mulugu and two in Rekhapalli in the neighbouring State.

The police, however, allege that a majority of the villagers were Maoist sympathisers who supplied rations, passed on information about the movement of security forces, provided logistical support, helped plant IEDs and booby traps, and put up Maoist posters in the villages.

Muchaki Bheemaiah, 24, whose father Jogu is the oldest in the village, was arrested in 2020 for allegedly moving with the Maoists. He spent nearly 18 months in Khammam jail.

“He could have been recruited by the Maoists and killed in a police operation. He had the potential to become an active cadre, but we saved his life by arresting him,” a police officer says, as the youngster nods in agreement.

Muchaki says 22 cases were registered against him under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, with one recently quashed. He says he went into the jungle with banned party divisional committee member Sudhakar and stayed with the Maoists for two months.

“I used to carry gunny bags for them as they moved around. I also helped plant an IED near Pamunuru, which I later showed to the police after getting caught. In fact, I led them to the locations of four IEDs,” he says.

Eight people from Pamunuru and Palem were booked in the 22 cases. One of them, Madvi Kosa, died this summer after being released from prison, while another, Chundam Pandu, remains in jail.

During Operation Karreguttalu in April 2025, which lasted nearly 21 days, landmines and firing reportedly prevented security forces from reaching Maoist positions for about 17 days, injuring several commandos, he says.

Nearly 500 Maoists, including Central Committee members, eventually sheltered in the hills. In the final operation, 31 were killed and the survivors retreated towards Telangana and southern Bastar.

The episode, the former cadre says, showed that difficult terrain could not protect guerrillas indefinitely without local support, even as police informers gradually strengthened. Hundreds of militia members helped Maoists lay landmines and booby traps, he recalls.

With roads seen as the first step towards development, the government is set to lay a BT (bituminous) road in the area, officials inform. The Forest Department is planning to promote forest tourism and trekking by developing premium cottages at Doli, the highest peak in the State.

At the same time, the forests are emerging as a site for major infrastructure projects. Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd. (MEIL), Sun Petrochemicals and Greenko Energies Pvt. Ltd. have proposed pumped storage projects at Alubaka, Chalamalu and Ippagudem respectively, in the Godavari basin.

MoUs have already been signed for the three projects with proposed investments of ₹11,000 crore by MEIL, ₹45,500 crore by Sun Petrochemicals and ₹24,000 crore by Greenko Energies.

All three are located deep inside the forest. “These companies are just making way for more projects and mining in the region,” an official says.

That fear, Kamini says, lingered until early this year, when the last of the Maoists was either killed or surrendered to police. However, the villagers remain largely unaware of the projects planned in the area and of most of the State government’s welfare schemes.