Top Maoist commander Kishenji alias Mallojula Koteswararao’s encounter killing was widely reported in the national press. These reports provide interesting details about the incident and Kishenji himself.
The Telegraph
KISHAN KILLED, ‘99%’
Kishan, the hooded Maoist mastermind who issued a death threat to a chief minister on TV, was suspected with “99 per cent” certainty to have been killed by the joint forces in a West Midnapore jungle this evening.
A Telegraph reporter, who had seen Kishan earlier this month, said late tonight that the dead man in a photograph from the encounter site “very much” resembled the guerrilla leader.
Times of India
Effeminate voice masked a brutal heart
Television viewers across the state will best remember him as the faceless, slightly effeminate voice, comforting the wife and mother of abducted police officer Atindranath Dutta with the words: “Kanna korben na, kanna korben na (Do not cry, do not cry)”. The face behind the pink gamchha was that of Mallojula Koteswar Rao alias Kishanji, the Bengal government’s worst nightmare for several years and architect of several mass murders.
The Pioneer
Killing machine Kishanji killed at last
Thursday’s success was a boost for Banerjee who had taken a political risk by ignoring advice from her erstwhile allies — in her struggle against the Left Front Government — in the civil society and gone ahead against the Red rebels.
The death of Kishenji not only affords a major success for the Chief Minister who could not concentrate on the industrialization and other developmental works in jangalmahal but also could help the anti-Maoist operations in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa experts felt.
The Economic Times
Kishanji shot dead: How security forces trapped Naxal leader Kishanji in his ‘den’?
A phone call that Kishanji made on Wednesday night seeking reinforcements from Maoist cadres in Jharkhand proved to be his undoing.
Deccan Hearald
Is number 3 in Maoist leadership jinxed?
With Molajula Koteswar Rao alias Kishenji, the third-in-command of the CPI (Maoist) politburo, being killed in an encounter with the police forces on Thursday, speculations galore on whether the position held by him is jinxed. Incidentally, another number three in the Maoist hierarchy, Azad, had suffered similar fate last year.
