As thousands mourn a slain rebel in Bastar, the report asks whether the state can kill a movement without addressing the conditions that gave it life
Narrated by Rachana for Khabar Lahariya, this video reports from the funeral procession of the Maoist leader Madvi Hidma in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. Hidma was killed in an alleged “encounter” by Indian security forces in Maredumilli, Andhra Pradesh, in November, 2025. The video report focuses on the support for Hidma in Bastar, which is where he lived, and was said to be the youngest member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Hidma was believed to be around 50 years old.
According to reports, Hidma was said to be part of the “Maovadi” or Maoist movement from a young age. His killing is being talked about in Bastar, but also all over the country. In this encounter, Hidma was killed with his wife and some comrades, after the police received information that he was travelling from Bastar to the forests of Andhra Pradesh.
On the one hand, the mainstream media and security agencies are calling it a “major victory” and are seeing this as the conclusive end of a major and influential Maoist rebel fighter. But there is also another picture that people are failing to see. On social media, Rachana points out, it is visible that there were thousands of attendees at Hidma’s funeral. In video footage, these people are seen not just observing the procession, but also crying, rallying protest slogans, and engaged in performing Hidma’s last rites.
This is not the first time that funerals of those killed by the arms of the state have become a focal point for popular protest. Rachana lists other such killings: for instance, when in January 2025, Central Committee Member of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) Chalapathi was killed in Gairaband in an encounter with the police; or when Maoist leader Suguluri Chinnana was killed; or also when Ravi, a fighter, was killed in 2025 by police and the armed forces. Large numbers of people gathered in their hometowns to pay their respects and honour them with funeral processions. Videos on social media showed that they were not just the relatives of the slain fighters, but also ordinary village people.
During Hidma’s procession, Sori —an Adivasi school teacher turned prominent activist and political leader in Bastar— said resolutely that Hidma’s death should not be seen as an “encounter” between Hidma and the security forces, but more straightforwardly as a murder. “If he could be arrested, why was he killed?”, Sori asked.
Just this year, 134 Maoist fighters have been killed by the armed forces appointed by the government, and 410 have surrendered. The government has stated that by March 31, 2026 they will “finish off” the Naxalite and Maoist movement in India, but if one looks at this from the ground-level up, it is difficult to say if snatching away guns will be the same as ending the ideas of discontent in the regions where the rebels are from. Sori states, “until the oppression of and assaults on Adivasis (indigenous people) in India do not stop, till then, figures and ideas of those like Hidma will be alive.”
As Rachana asks in her report: “The question is this, was the procession for Hidma himself, or his ideas? Were these people present out of fear, belief or faith? Are people happy about the Maoist rebellion ending, or are they upset? Also, if (as the government and media) claims that if the Naxalite movement is reducing in its appeal among the people of Bastar, why were there so many people gathered at Hidma’s funeral procession?”
She goes on to say that with so many supporters, it is clear that “Hidma was not just a person to the people of Bastar, but an identity, a subject, and also has now transformed into an idea.”
The report dwells on the reasons why armed resistance exists in India in the first place. In situations where indigenous communities have been continuously neglected and oppressed by governments both at the federal and state levels, their lands snatched, and their lives constantly threatened by environmental collapse, such reasons are not difficult to find.
Deepak on the selection:
For the Indian state, Maoist rebel leaders have always been a threat to hollow out, and bodies to erase to sow allegiance among the supporters. However, the reasons why such resistance and discontent exists in the first place remains entirely absent, despite the movement being more than six decades old today. Maoist leaders, and the movement is made up of indigenous communities, all of whom have had their lands snatched and livelihoods threatened under succeeding governments. Today, under the dual engine of the BJP government and escalated corporate interest in mineral and forest reserve, Adivasi communities face further threats. The BJP-led Union government has announced their anti-Maoist campaigns under “Operation Kagar”, and criminalised these figures further, putting them on Most Wanted lists. The chief minister of Chhattisgarh state called these armed forces-led killings the end of “red terror”, and the central government has exported this majoritarian triumphalism across the country. Even so, from the ground, as Rachana reports in Khabar Lahariya, the support for Hidma and other Maoist leaders lingers. And his voice and ideas will be remembered, even if his body does not remain.
The video was published as हिड़मा की अंतिम यात्रा में इतनी भीड़ क्यों? बस्तर का बड़ा सवाल Khabar Lahariya Digital, with reporting by Rachna.
It is available here.
Khabar Lahariya is an independent Indian digital and print news outlet known for feminist, rural, and grassroots reporting, produced largely by women journalists from marginalised communities.
Summary by SD.
