A forest in Sikeed. Two INSAS rifles. 370 live cartridges. 7 magazines. 2 walkie-talkies.
And one man with a ₹10 lakh bounty on his head.
That's the scene from 2023.
This week, it finally caught up with him.
A Latehar court just sentenced Baijnath Singh, alias Chandan Kharwar, to 10 years behind bars.
Plus a ₹10,000 fine.
He wasn't a foot soldier.
He was a zonal commander of the banned CPI (Maoist) — one of the outfit's mid-tier field bosses in Jharkhand's red corridor.
52 years old. From Metlong village. Manika police station limits.
A local boy who climbed the ranks of India's longest-running insurgency.
Rewind to 2023.
Police got a tip. Singh and his squad were deep in the Sikeed forest, allegedly planning their next strike.
A combing operation moved in.
What they walked out with:
🔫 2 INSAS rifles
🧨 370 live cartridges
📦 7 magazines
📡 2 walkie-talkies
👤 One high-value commander in cuffs
Charges piled up fast — IPC, Arms Act, and Section 17 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act.
Jharkhand has been quietly squeezing the Maoist network for years now.
Encounters. Arrests. Surrenders. Convictions.
Just last year, another commander with a similar ₹10 lakh bounty was picked up in the same district after an overnight gunfight.
The pattern is clear.
The forests that once gave cover…
are now the hunting ground.
The zonal commanders — the middle spine of the movement — are the ones falling one by one.
A ₹10 lakh reward.
A 10-year sentence.
A ₹10,000 fine.
The numbers almost feel poetic.
But the real story isn't the arithmetic.
It's what a courtroom conviction signals — that the Maoist chapter in Jharkhand isn't just being fought in jungles anymore.
It's being closed in courtrooms.
One commander at a time.
That's all for now!
