A 55-year-old top Maoist, who was wanted in over 100 cases and carried a reward of ₹75 lakh on his head, was found dead in a forest in Bihar’s Gaya district on Wednesday night, police said and called it a major jolt to Left-wing insurgency.Gaya’s senior police superintendent Harpreet Kaur said Sandeep Yadav evaded arrest for around three decades. She added he was in charge of Maoists’ Bihar Jharkhand Special Area Committee and faced the cases in Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, and Uttar Pradesh. Kaur said the cases included those related to attacks on police and paramilitaries and looting of arms and ammunition.
Yadav’s family told police that he had been ill for a long time and died of a drug reaction as he did not receive proper treatment. They added some unknown people brought the body to his residence from the forest.Security forces suspect Yadav may have been poisoned as a result of differences among Maoists since top ideologue Vijay Kumar Arya’s arrest in April. The arrest is believed to have triggered a power struggle. Yadav was trying to strengthen the organisation after Arya’s arrest. Kaur said Yadav’s body was sent for a video graphed post-mortem on Thursday to ascertain the cause of his death.The Enforcement Directorate seized Yadav’s movable and immovable properties worth ₹86 lakh in Gaya and Aurangabad districts in the first such action against a Maoist leader in the country in 2018.