Milind Teltumbde: From coal miner to top Maoist commander of central India

Mumbai/Gadchiroli, Nov 14 The excitement in security circles was palpable as news trickled late on Saturday that one of the 26 Maoists gunned down could be of the top leaders Milind B. Teltumbade.

Home Minister Dilip Walse-Patil officially confirmed the development on Sunday, that indeed, the 57-year-old dreaded Red insurgent and head of its Central India operations, was among those felled by the security agencies' bullets in the Gadchiroli forests in the November 13 encounter.

A Dalit, Milind Teltumbde, 57, was the brother of human rights activist and scholar Anand Teltumbde - who is the brother-in-law of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi President Dr Prakash Ambedkar.

Anand Teltumbade is among the group of so-called "Urban Maoists" who were raided in early and mid-2018 in connection with the Koregaon Bhima-Elgar Parishad cases - in which even Milind Teltumbade was "wanted" - and is currently lodged in the Taloja Jail, Raigad.

Born in Yavatmal, Anabd Teltumbade studied upto SSC and then completed his ITI course before starting life as ordinary electrician in the Padmapur open cast coal mine in 1984-1985, officials said.

A couple of years later, he came in touch with lawyer Sujan Abraham, who was state secretary of Akhil Maharashtra Kamgar Union with far-Leftist leanings - his maiden forays into what would later become a long and bloody career as an insurgent.

Milind Teltumbade was gradually attracted to the Maoist ideology and joined the coal workers' movements through the Mazdoor Sangathan, the Indian Mine Workers Federation and then even as President of Naujawan Bharat Sabha.

All the time, he worked in the field and rural areas to recruit volunteers, and also played a critical role in spreading Maoism in urban regions among the educated youth.

By the late 1990s, he was a full-fledged activist of the banned CPI-Maoist and worked as a DVCM for the coal-belts in Chandrapur-Nagpur districts.

In 2004, he became a member of Maharashtra Rajya State Committee and after the arrest of Shridhar Shrinivasan, was promoted as the powerful MRSC Secretary.

Within the next 8 years, by 2012, he was the acting in-charge of the North Gadchiroli-Gondia-Balaghat Division and at the 4th Central Committee Members meeting in April 2013, was promoted as a CCM.

In 2016-2017, the MSRC was wound up and a new 'Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh