Top Maoist leader Usendi surrenders due to ill health

A top Maoist leader, Gusda Usendi, has ended nearly three decades of warfare against the establishment and laid down arms before police in Andhra Pradesh, citing ill health as the main reason for his surrender.

Usendi fought for nearly three decades in Chhattisgarh.

Better incentives and rehabilitation policy offered to the surrendered insurgents lured the rebel to surrender before the Andhra Pradesh police.

Usendi's wife also surrendered due to ill health.

"Both of us are suffering from serious ailments. That is the main reason," said Usendi.

While addressing a news conference in Hyderabad, the police assured of reward money to the leader.

"We have to see what is the surrender policy. If they have any surrender policy because he is surrendering here, the money 20 lakh rupees (two million) reward amount we will given to him, but what is the reward policy elsewhere in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, we have to see," said Interim Director General of Police of Andhra Pradesh, B. Prasada Rao.

Maoists are rebels who try to sink deep roots and form links after decades of neglect.

The rebels are rapidly expanding their insurgency and could move from remote rural areas to cities.

Equipped with automatic weapons, shoulder rocket launchers, mines and explosives, the Maoists want to cripple economic activity.

The Maoists, who say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless, control some of India's mineral-rich areas and operate in large swathes of the eastern, central and southern countryside.

The Maoists, also known as naxals, have killed police and politicians, and targeted government buildings and railway tracks in an insurgency that has killed thousands since the 1960s.

The rebels are estimated to number 7000 hardcore fighters in nearly a third of India's 630 districts.