Police said the former insurgents had chosen to abandon armed struggle and rejoin civilian life as part of an ongoing nationwide effort to dismantle the final remnants of the Maoist movement.

The Telangana police said in a statement that 47 Maoist members had “chosen to join the mainstream,” adding that “almost all remaining underground key leaders have now been neutralized.”The surrender follows Home Minister Amit Shah’s declaration on March 30 that India had become “Naxal-free,” marking what the government described as the effective end of an insurgency that began nearly six decades ago.

The rebellion traces its origins to 1967 in Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal’s Himalayan foothills, where a peasant uprising inspired a Maoist movement that later spread across large parts of central and eastern India.

At its peak in the mid-2000s, the insurgency operated across what officials called the “Red Corridor,” stretching through mineral-rich and forested regions, with an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 fighters active across multiple states.

More than 12,000 people, including rebels, security personnel, and civilians, were killed during the conflict, according to official figures.The government intensified military and intelligence operations over the past two years, targeting the final strongholds of the insurgency in remote forest regions, particularly in Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Odisha, and parts of Maharashtra.

Authorities said surrendered rebels were being provided rehabilitation packages that included vocational training, financial support, and new civilian identities to facilitate reintegration into society.Police said the 47 former rebels would receive a combined rehabilitation package worth about $159,000, or roughly $3,400 each.

Officials have also appealed to remaining underground cadres to lay down their arms and take advantage of state rehabilitation schemes.Despite the decline of the insurgency, authorities face the continuing challenge of clearing hundreds of improvised land mines and explosive devices planted by Maoist groups along forest routes and remote villages.

The rebels had long claimed to be fighting for the rights of marginalized Indigenous communities in central India’s resource-rich tribal belts, where disputes over land rights, mining, and displacement remain politically sensitive.

Security analysts say that while organized armed resistance has sharply weakened, the social and economic grievances that originally fueled the movement continue to persist in several regions.

The latest surrenders reflect the government’s effort to convert military gains into long-term stability while preventing the possibility of renewed underground mobilization.

The attacker was believed to be targeting a nearby police station but struck a civilian residence before reaching the intended site, said Muhammad Sajjad Khan, a local police official. The blast caused significant casualties among residents inside the house, he added.

The death toll was confirmed by Bannu assistant commissioner Ikramullah Khan, who said the injured had been shifted to nearby medical facilities.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. However, suspicion is likely to fall on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which has intensified attacks in the region in recent years, frequently targeting security installations.

Bannu lies in a volatile region bordering areas that were formerly part of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt, long affected by militancy and counterinsurgency operations.

Pakistan has repeatedly accused neighboring Afghanistan of failing to eliminate militant sanctuaries used to plan cross-border attacks, an allegation denied by the Taliban authorities in Kabul.