Senior CPI (Maoist) leader Thippiri Tirupati, also known as Devji, has reportedly surrendered before the Telangana Police. He is 60 years old and carried a reward of Rs 25 lakh. Telangana Police have not yet formally announced the surrender. Devji is believed to have taken over as the general secretary of the CPI (Maoist) about eight months ago after the killing of Nambala Keshava Rao (Basavaraju) by security forces in Chhattisgarh in May 2025.
According to media reports, Devji laid down arms in the Asifabad forests. Another 16 Maoists are reported to have surrendered along with him. The surrendered cadres are likely to be presented before the media soon.
Devji, a native of Karimnagar district who hails from Peddapalli in Telangana, was a Central Committee Member and politburo member of CPI (Maoist). He was among 17 Maoist leaders from Telangana who held key positions in various committees of the banned outfit across the country.
The surrender comes amid increased security forces operations against Maoists. Union Minister for Home Affairs Amit Shah had said that the Union government is resolved to “eliminate Naxalism” before March 31, 2026.
In November 2025, security forces killed six Maoists including top Maoist commander Madvi Hidma in Andhra Pradesh's Alluri Sitharamaraju district in the Andhra-Odisha border area.
As part of the anti-Maoist crackdown in Chhattisgarh in the name of Operation Kagar or Operation Black Forest, the Union government had announced that at least 31 Naxalites were killed as of May 2025.
Left parties, activists and others have condemned the extrajudicial killings, questioning if there were unarmed local residents among those killed.
The CPI (Maoist) has suffered a series of setbacks over the past year. The surrender of senior politburo member Mallojula Venugopal (Sonu) was earlier described as a turning point. Several other senior functionaries, including Ashanna, have also surrendered in recent months. While a number of Telangana-born Maoist leaders had surrendered before police in neighbouring Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, Devji’s reported surrender to Telangana Police would make him the highest-ranking Maoist to lay down arms before a security agency in the state.
During 2025, as many as 576 Maoists surrendered before Telangana Police, described as an unprecedented development since the formation of the People’s War, now CPI (Maoist), in 1980.
In November last year, members of Devji’s protection team were among 50 Maoists arrested from five districts of Andhra Pradesh on November 18, hours after an encounter in the forests of Alluri Sitharamaraju district in which top Maoist commander Madvi Hidma, his wife Raje and four others were killed.
A day later, seven Maoists, including Metturi Joga Rao (Tech Shankar), were killed in the same district. Civil liberties groups had earlier alleged that Devji and another senior Maoist, Malla Raji Reddy, were in the custody of state police, and a habeas corpus petition was filed in the Andhra Pradesh High Court seeking directions to produce them before the court.
Andhra Pradesh Police, however, told the High Court that Devji and Raji Reddy were not in their custody.
