Locals and tribal communities in central and eastern India have long found themselves caught in a crossfire between Maoist rebels and government security forces.

The Maoist insurgency – an armed movement seeking to establish a communist state – has persisted for nearly six decades and claimed thousands of lives.

Left-Wing Extremism (LWE), as it is officially called, began in 1967 as an armed peasant revolt in West Bengal and, by the mid-2000s, had spread to nearly a third of India’s districts. In 2009, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called it the country’s “greatest internal threat”.

Last year, the Indian government set a March 2026 deadline to end the insurgency and launched intensified security operations under its “ruthless” containment strategy.

Between January 2024 and September this year, security forces killed more than 600 alleged rebels, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP). This includes several senior members of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).

To tighten control over Maoist-dominated regions, the government also set up dozens of new security camps, particularly in Chhattisgarh, a central Indian state where tribal communities make up around 30% of the population and live deep within its dense forests.

Amid the crackdown, the rebels announced earlier this year that they were open to conditional peace talks with the government.

Officials, however, have ruled out negotiations unless the Maoists lay down their arms. They say that the government’s actions are not just necessary but also seem to be working. According to the federal home ministry’s annual report, security forces carried out nearly twice as many anti-Maoist operations in early 2024 compared with the same period in 2023 and the number of rebels killed was five times higher.

But rights activists worry about the human cost of these operations.

Maoist-affected regions remain among India’s poorest and most underdeveloped, despite rich natural resources, with ordinary citizens – especially tribal communities- bearing the heaviest burden.

In Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, Pekaram Mettami mourns his son Suresh, in his 20s, killed by Maoist rebels in January over alleged police links – a claim denied by his family, police, and locals.

Suresh, who studied up to 10th grade, was the village’s most educated resident and a strong advocate for local schools and hospitals.

“He only wanted better facilities for his people and that cost him his life,” his father said.

About 100 miles away in Bijapur, Arjun Potam mourns his brother Lachchu, killed in a February anti-insurgency operation. Police said eight Maoists were killed, but Mr Potam insists all were innocent.

“Those who died didn’t have any weapons on them. Some even tried to surrender, but the police did not listen,” he says.

“He [Lachchu] had ties with both police and the Maoists. But he never took up arms,” he added.

Sundarraj P, a senior police official in Bastar, denied the allegations and said that “there has been no case of wrongdoing [against civilians] in recent times”.

But locals allege that such security operations – where the line between armed rebels and ordinary civilians is often blurred – are common.

In 2021, security forces shot dead five protesters in Sukma district opposing a new security camp, locals claim. Police said they were attacked by a mob incited by rebels, but villagers insist the protesters only blocked roads to prevent officials from reaching the site

“They declared my husband a Maoist after he was hit by a bullet,” said Ursa Nande, whose husband Ursa Bheema was among those killed.

An Indian Express report said an inquiry was ordered, but the district’s police chief and top civil official did not respond to BBC Hindi on its outcome.

The Indian government says its “zero-tolerance” policy against Maoism has succeeded, with the District Reserve Guard (DRG) – comprising locals and surrendered Maoists – helping security forces track rebel tactics and hideouts, senior officials told BBC Hindi.

Rights activists oppose including locals in these units, likening them to the now-dissolved Special Police Officers (SPO) force, which also relied on local recruits.

In 2011, the Supreme Court ordered Chhattisgarh to disband the force, calling it unconstitutional and warning that tribal recruits were undertrained and used as “cannon fodder” against rebels.

While this halted tribal recruitment for the SPOs, it didn’t apply to the DRG, which continues to enlist local youth, including former rebels.

Gyanesh, 28, (name changed) is one of them. He surrendered as a rebel last year and joined the DRG within weeks, taking part in counter-insurgency operations despite saying he “has not received any training yet”.

Police deny this, saying all personnel receive proper training before operations, while activists urge the government to prevent ex-rebels from returning to arms.

Author and academic Nandini Sundar, who had petitioned the court against the use of SPOs, says that “a dignified state response” to surrendered rebels would be to say, “come and live a normal life as a civilian”.

The government has also launched incentives to gain local support, including a 10 million rupee ($113,000; £84,000) development fund for villages that secure full Maoist surrenders, along with promises of new schools, roads, and mobile towers in insurgent-affected areas.

But locals remain opposed to these projects, fearing that they will lose their land, be displaced, and see the forests they depend on harmed. Akash Korsa, 26, a tribal resident of Bastar, says these fears help sustain some local support for the Maoists.

Experts doubt the government can fully eliminate Maoism by March. Former Chhattisgarh police chief RK Vij says small rebel groups still exist even in districts officially declared Maoist-free.

For now, caught between the two narratives, locals continue to pay the price for the decades-long struggle.

“We never got any help from the government, even in our darkest moments,” said Ursa Nande. “And now the Maoists too have stopped helping us,”

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English flags, Korean spirits, reams of VHS tape and apocalyptic war zones all feature in works by the artists whose installations are going on show in this year’s Turner Prize exhibition this weekend.

Nnena Kalu, Mohammed Sami, Zadie Xa and Rene Matić have been nominated for the annual contemporary art award.

They have each taken over a gallery at Cartwright Hall in Bradford – the current UK City of Culture – to display their art in the Turner Prize exhibition, which opens on Saturday.

They are “four very different artists offering an intriguing snapshot of contemporary art”, the Times’ art critic Nancy Durrant wrote, while the Telegraph’s Alastair Sooke said they show “a bewildering medley of materials and approaches”.

The winner will be announced on 9 December.

Find our more about the nominees and their work below:

At 28, Rene Matić, from Peterborough, is the second-youngest nominee in Turner Prize history (after 1995 winner Damien Hirst).

Mixed-race and non-binary, Matić has assembled photos, banners, dolls and sounds that illustrate the artist’s grapples with their place in modern Britain, as modern Britain grapples with its own identity. As Matić puts it, an “obsession with understanding Britishness, or not understanding it”.

The first thing visitors see is a photo of a St George’s flag hanging in a London pub window above a sign saying “Private party”. It sends an unintentional but unwelcoming message that encapsulates a bigger picture, in Matić’s eyes.

The artist “primarily works with photography and their work talks about identity, society and a sense of belonging”, exhibition curator Jill Iredale says.

There is a jumble of more snapshots from Matić’s life – Gaza and Black Lives Matter protests, sweaty clubbers, kissing couples, graffiti, parties. Meanwhile, a giant flag says “No room” on one side and “for violence” on the other – a wry reference to the hypocrisy the artist feels can be present in politicians’ words.

There’s also a cabinet holding 45 second-hand black dolls that Matić has collected.

“It makes you think about the way that they’re depicted, and about the representation of black people,” Iredale says. “The really startling ones struck me when we were installing them, like the really bright red lipstick that you get on what are essentially babies, and some with bright red or orange eyes.”

The Guardian’s art critic Adrian Searle said of Matić’s work: “Peace and protest, friendship and family are all mixed together, along with contested ideas of nationhood and belonging.”

Matić’s exhibits “express Gen Z’s spirit with panache”, wrote the Telegraph’s Alastair Sooke.

You must take off your shoes (or put on shoe coverings) to step onto the reflective, shiny gold floor in Zadie Xa‘s gallery – heightening the feeling that you’re walking into an otherworldly fantasy kingdom.

The London-based Canadian-Korean artist has created cloth patchwork paintings using the bojagi technique – resulting in stained glass-style pictures showing scenes inspired by Korean folk art and ocean creatures.

There are also shells hanging from the ceiling, as well as 665 small traditional bells arranged in a shell shape.

Combined with the coloured, shimmering floor and walls, and a soundtrack of muffled voices, gongs and bird calls, it all creates a powerful if unnerving feeling of floating in another realm.

It is “the most sensually alluring” of the four nominees’ exhibitions, Durrant wrote.

Sunday Times critic Waldemar Januszczak told BBC Radio 4’s Front Row it was an “extraordinary installation”.

“It’s a sort of new-age empire. You walk in and you’re not sure if you’re going into space or underwater or what,” he said. “It genuinely is transportative. You wander into there and you go to another world.”

Large multi-coloured sculptures – haphazardly wrapped in brightly-coloured layers of ribbons, string, cardboard strips and shiny VHS tape – hang in mid-air in Nnena Kalu‘s room. Some take animalistic forms, looking like out-of-control piñatas.

Meanwhile, on the walls are large sheets of colourful paper covered in swirled patterns, some like tornados or whirlpools. They all come in pairs or trios, with the images in each set similar but not exactly the same.

Kalu is a learning disabled artist with limited verbal communication, and has been a resident artist with Action Space, which supports artists with learning disabilities, for more than 25 years.

Her “bursts of energy and colour” were made after a period of being unable to work on her art during Covid, Iredale explains. “So you get these big vortexes, it’s quite intense, with these outbursts of activity.”

The sculptures and drawings are both made up of seemingly endless loops of swirls, squigles and strands.

“The sculptures are very much the same as the shapes that you get on the drawings,” Iredale says. “They’re kind of 3D embodiments of the drawings, but they’re produced independently.”

The Guardian’s Searle wrote about the drawings: “They are riotous and rhythmic, purposeful and compelling. There’s no fudging. Kalu deserves to win this year’s Turner Prize.”

Baghdad-born Mohammed Sami, who began his career painting official portraits of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, is favoured by other critics.

“To my mind, only Sami deserves to win – in large part because of a single, remarkable new painting,” said the Telegraph’s art critic Alastair Sooke.

The Hunter’s Return, he said, is “an instant-classic contemporary history painting that perfectly expresses the dark, disoriented zeitgeist of our age of perma-conflict”.

The Hunter’s Return is a vast canvas depicting a war zone, with toppled trees and craters lit up by a fiery sky, and with green military laser beams emerging from the smoke.

Most of Sami’s other paintings are also striking and huge, and give a visceral sense of the aftermath of destruction without actually including any people or identifying which battlefield they intend to show.

“They’re always hung quite low as well, so the idea is that you could step into the pictures,” says Iredale.

Another picture shows horses’ hoofmarks that have churned up a sunflower field; one is full of shards of flying crockery frozen in mid-explosion; and a third features a shadow of helicopter blades (or are they?) over empty palace chairs.

The Sunday Times’ Januszczak also judged Sami to be the best of the bunch. His exhibition “creates a feeling of tension, of disturbance, of unease, but it doesn’t spell anything out”, the critic said. “I found it absolutely gripping and very powerful.”

The Turner Prize exhibition is at Cartwright Hall in Bradford until 22 February.

It’s that time of year again.

A few weeks ago it was picnics and hanging the washing outside. Now kids are back at school, the nights are drawing in – and Strictly Come Dancing is back.

There are 15 couples hoping to waltz their way to the glitterball trophy, with the first live show taking place on Saturday night.

A former Love Islander, a cabaret singer and a YouTube star – this year’s Strictly has a packed line-up of celebs.

I’ve been backstage to meet some of them, to hear just how gruelling the training has been, what they’re most looking forward to – and what they’re most terrified about.

Before that, though, here’s a reminder of who’s on this year’s show.

On last week’s launch show, we found out which celebrities were paired with which professional dancers. Here’s the list in full:

• Alex Kingston and Johannes Radebe
• Amber Davies and Nikita Kuzmin*
• Balvinder Sopal and Julian Caillon
• Chris Robshaw and Nadiya Bychkova
• Ellie Goldstein and Vito Coppola
• George Clarke and Alexis Warr
• Harry Aikines-Aryeetey and Karen Hauer
• Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Lauren Oakley
• Karen Carney and Carlos Gu
• La Voix and Aljaž Škorjanec
• Lewis Cope and Katya Jones
• Ross King and Jowita Przystał
• Stefan Dennis and Dianne Buswell
• Thomas Skinner and Amy Dowden
• Vicky Pattison and Kai Widdrington

*announced later

Former Love Islander Dani Dyer had also been due to take part. But she pulled out this week after breaking her ankle. Actress and West End star Amber Davies, who is also an ex-islander, has been drafted in as her replacement.

Game of Thrones actor Kristian Nairn also withdrew from the line-up earlier, on medical grounds.

Two pro dancers – Warr and Caillon – are new for this year.

But not everything has changed.

This year’s hosts are the same – Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman.

There’s no change to the judges’ panel either. Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse, Anton Du Beke and head judge Shirley Ballas will be watching every step taken by the dancers.

Weeks of intense training lie ahead. So why would anyone go on the show?

Alex Kingston, a star of stage and screen for more than 40 years, including in Doctor Who and ER, said she’s taking part to show others “anything is possible”.

“To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel necessarily any different than I did 20 years ago,” the 62-year-old said.

“And so I just think, if it’s something that you want to do, go for it. And also it’s important to stay healthy and to learn things.”

Meanwhile Neighbours star Stefan Dennis has a very personal reason for wanting to appear on Strictly.

“I actually am doing this for my wife, so I can dance with her,” the 66-year-old told me.

“My wife was a professional dancer, she is still is a dancer, and she’s married to a bloke who can’t dance to save his life. And it would just be really nice to take her out dancing.”

When I meet the couples at Elstree studios in Hertfordshire, they’ve been busy practising for the group routine.

Not everyone showed up for the interviews. Former Apprentice star Thomas Skinner dropped out of his slot the night before.

Skinner also walked out of a press event early, after seeing a message on a reporter’s phone which – he later said – “caught [him] off guard”.

I asked the celebrities who did turn up, how the training was going.

“It’s hard for me to let go of the whole, ‘I don’t dance’ thing, and just fully get into it, but that’s what I want to do. And I feel like I’ve started a bit… maybe,” said YouTuber and podcaster George Clarke, 25.

Clarke also told me he was ready for some hard home truths about his moves.

“I think it would be silly for me to turn up and think, week one, well, I’m going to go out there and the judge is going to say, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’,” he said.

“I’m inviting it, because I think I’ll most likely be like, that’s fair enough.”

Former Team GB sprinter Harry Aikines-Aryeetey – also known as Nitro in Gladiators – is no stranger to performing in front of audiences.

But the 37-year-old said Strictly is “totally different” to anything he’s used to.

“I’m learning more about myself through the process,” he said.

“Obviously, I’m not trained in any capacity in this way of life,” he added. “So I’m quite excited to see how I deal with that.”

That’s not to say there aren’t nerves though.

EastEnders star Balvinder Sopal, 46, said being on Strictly was a “dream”, who fell in love with the first series and has been hooked ever since.

“And now that I’m here, I’m absolutely petrified,” she laughed. “I don’t really know what to expect. I just keep thinking, have I made the wrong decision? I haven’t, but yes, it’s quite terrifying being on the actual other side of it.”

Model and actress Ellie Goldstein, 23, also admitted to feeling nervous.

She said she was particularly worried about learning the Charleston and the tango.

But Goldstein – who is the first star with Down’s syndrome to take part in a regular series of the dance show – also gave an insight into what she is most looking forward to.

“The spray tans, the hair and make-up, and the sparkles, the costumes… and the glamour,” she said.

Strictly, which has been airing since 2004, has faced multiple controversies in recent years relating to the behaviour of some of its professionals and celebrity guests.

This summer, the Metropolitan Police said it was investigating allegations of drug use on the show.

Separately, an unnamed star from the show was arrested on suspicion of rape. It is understood the man is not related to the new series of Strictly.

When asked whether the various controversies had put her off taking part in the show, Kingston said they hadn’t.

“I don’t really follow anything that’s outside of the actual show or the programme itself. So no, that didn’t bother me at all actually. I just wanted to get on with learning how to dance.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” added Australian actor Dennis. “Remember I come from the other side of the world.”

The Strictly live shows will run from Saturday right the way up to December.

This year’s series will also include all the usual theme weeks, including the Blackpool week.

Earlier this month, Strictly proved it remains a hit with viewers, who voted it best talent show at the National Television Awards.