It was on Friday, December 22, when one of the most-wanted members of the CPI (Maoist) group, Jampanna surrendered to the Telangana police in Hyderabad. He along with his wife surrendered on Friday evening. The 57-year-old Maoist leader who goes by the name Jinugu Narasimha Reddy alias Jampanna alias JP said that he was suffering from several ailments. He was in the Kandhamal in Odisha before he decided to surrender.
He talked to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in Warangal. The party organised the surrender through Superintendent of Police N Koti Reddy from Mahbubabad District. On the occasion, the Telangana Police called Jampanna’s surrender a “shot in the arm for security forces”. An official from the police said, “For more than 20 years, this man was responsible for strengthening the Maoist movement in North Telangana districts and adjoining Dandakaranya area. He is a very strong person. His ideological and military strategy is very sharp”.
Police sources said that his health deteriorated in recent years. On December 16, 2014, he was nearly killed in an encounter with the Odisha Special Police in Telan forest near Kalahandi. Since then, he had been cooling his heels in Kandhamal, a well-protected Maoist turf.
Jampanna became a part of the Maoist outfit around 34 years ago. His wife, Hinge Rajita, has an MSc degree from Osmania University, joined the outfit in 2003. In 2006, the two were reportedly married. The Maoist, Jampanna, has a Rs 20 lakh reward on his head. The reward came from Cherlopalem village in the Warangal district. Jampanna’s family owns 11.5 acres of prime wetland in the village.
The Telangana Police — and before that the police forces in undivided Andhra Pradesh — had been making appeals to Jampanna through his mother C Yashodamma, who lives in an old age home in Warangal, asking him to surrender. It was way back in 1990 when Jampanna was last seen in public.
In 1980, Jampanna graduated from the Zilla Parishad Secondary School at Cherlopalem, He took a year-long break and then joined the Industrial Training Institute at Mallepally near Hyderabad. He completed the course from ITI in 1983. Soon after, he joined the People’s War Group before going underground.
According to a Telangana Police dossier, before he became a central committee member, Jampanna was the outfit’s North Telangana special zonal committee secretary. He also briefly headed the Odisha state committee and was involved in several operations along the Chhattisgarh-Odisha border.
Around 18 cases have been registered against Jampanna in the Warangal district alone. Some of the cases registered are of murder, dacoity and exchange of fire with police.
