India, Sept. 24 -- On September 20, Maoist leader Kotta Ramachandra Reddy, alias Vikalp, co-signed a statement denouncing Politburo member Mallojula Venugopal Rao (Sonu)'s open letter for "temporarily abandoning the armed struggle". The statement, which accused Sonu of conspiring to break the party, reached the media after Vikalp was killed along with a fellow Maoist central committee member, Kadari Satyanarayana Reddy, in Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur on September 22.

The statement signalled a deepening crisis within the Maoist ranks, even as it maintained that the Maoists had chosen the path of protracted people's war. The outlawed organisation faces leadership decapitation amid heightened counter-insurgency operations in line with the Uni...