The Greyhounds last leap

Why in the News

The Greyhounds, the counter insurgency force raised in 1989 to fight Maoists in the forests of undivided Andhra Pradesh, is being repurposed after the Union Home Minister’s declaration in May that the country is free of Naxal activity. The force’s strength has fallen to 650 personnel from a peak of over 2,000. Telangana was earlier declared totally free of Maoist armed formations, after a surrender driven strategy that brought in 817 rebels between December 2023 and April this year. The tension is over mandate. A unit built for jungle warfare against an armed insurgency is now being pointed at marijuana cultivation in the same remote hills, an activity the State Security Adviser warns could evolve into a violent crime syndicate.

What is the Greyhounds force and how is it manned?

1. Origin and purpose: It was created in 1989 by Indian Police Service (IPS) officer K.S. Vyas, after conventional policing proved inadequate against the growing armed strength of the Maoists in undivided Andhra Pradesh.
2. A deputation unit, not a recruited one: There is no separate recruitment for the force. Personnel volunteer from the Special Police, the Armed Reserve and the Civil Police, and are screened for physical fitness, mental resilience and determination.
3. The service incentive: Personnel deputed to the force receive an additional 60 percent of their basic pay and dearness allowance for the duration of the posting.
4. Unit structure and composition: In erstwhile Andhra Pradesh the force ran 41 units of 35 personnel each, with a Deputy Superintendent of Police, an inspector and three sub inspectors in every unit. No woman has ever headed the force or served in any of its operational units.

How did the Greyhounds become a model for other forces?

1. The training design: Narayan Singh Bhati, a former Deputy Inspector General of the Special Security Bureau, now the Sashastra Seema Bal, built the training programme and stayed on as a consultant for nearly four decades. He was awarded the Padma Shri and died in June 2023 at the age of 92.
2. State forces modelled on it: Odisha raised its Special Operations Group, Maharashtra its C-60, West Bengal its Counter-Insurgency Force and Chhattisgarh its District Reserve Guard on the same design.
3. The central force it shaped: The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) drew on the Greyhounds model for its Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA), its own jungle warfare unit.
4. Embedded in police training: An attachment with the Greyhounds is mandatory for IPS officers under training at the National Police Academy. Officers allotted to the Telugu States serve a separate posting with the force.
5. The intelligence backbone: The Special Intelligence Branch (SIB), raised alongside the force, tracked the movement and activities of the rebels and supplied the targeting that operations depended on.

What does the operational record show?

1. The tally in undivided Andhra Pradesh: The force neutralised 693 rebels and seized 1,250 firearms.
2. The tally after bifurcation: Since the formation of Telangana on 2 June 2014, it has killed 92 Naxals and recovered 360 weapons.
3. The targeting rule: A person in olive green uniform carrying a weapon was not by itself treated as a target, since a hunter or a village resident could fit that description. Identification required a self loading rifle, an AK series rifle or a .303 rifle in hand.
4. Cross border operations: Teams crossed into neighbouring Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh to strike targets operating from across State borders.
5. What operations turned on: An operation at Manala in Nizamabad in March 2005 located a concealed group only after an officer spotted a glint of metal on a hilltop, and ten rebels were killed there.

What did the force lose?

1. Personnel killed: The Greyhounds lost over 60 men over the years, including six after the formation of Telangana.
2. The Balimela ambush: On 29 June 2008, Maoists ambushed a returning team on the Balimela reservoir in Odisha and sank its boat, killing 37 people including 32 commandos.
3. The founder killed: K.S. Vyas was shot dead on 27 January 1993 while jogging at a stadium in Hyderabad, by five members of the CPI (ML) People’s War Group.
4. Officers targeted as policy: Vyas was one of three IPS officers killed by the rebels in Andhra Pradesh, alongside G. Pardesi Naidu in November 1993 and C. Umesh Chandra in September 1999.

Why did surrenders rather than encounters end the insurgency in Telangana?

1. The surrender policy: A surrender policy announced by the Chief Minister of Telangana was the operative instrument, with the Special Intelligence Branch working the approaches to cadre.
2. The numbers it produced: Between December 2023 and 30 April this year, 817 rebels surrendered, including four central committee members and 22 State committee members. A further 138 were arrested and 325 weapons were seized, including 56 AK-47 rifles.
3. What it did to the organisation: The CPI (Maoist) was left headless, leaderless and rudderless once its leadership tier came out.
4. Why the method mattered: Encounters and arrests can turn rebels into martyrs within sections of society. A surrender removes that status and demoralises the cadre left behind.
5. The declaration that followed: The State was declared totally free of Maoist armed formations.

What is the force’s mandate after the Naxal free declaration?

1. The new target: Intelligence inputs are to be used to detect marijuana cultivation in the same remote hills that were insurgent strongholds.
2. Why the pivot is being made now: Roads and development are reaching those areas. That opens them to cultivation as much as to administration.
3. The precedent being cited: Marijuana cultivation is rampant along the Andhra Odisha Border, and the stated concern is that such cultivation evolves into a violent crime syndicate over time.
4. How the two units divide the work: The Special Intelligence Branch identifies the activity, and the Greyhounds are then deployed to ensure cultivation does not take hold.

Challenges to the Greyhounds after the Naxal free declaration

1. A specialised skill decays without use: Jungle warfare proficiency is perishable and depends on continuous operations, so a force held in reserve loses the capability it was built for. Eg. The unit has no recruitment of its own, so its capability rests entirely on the officers deputed in at any given time.
   The Fix: Fix a minimum annual field exercise and cross deployment schedule with other jungle warfare units, so proficiency survives the absence of an active insurgency.
2. Declaring an insurgency over invites premature withdrawal: A formal end date creates pressure to cut force levels and budgets before the conditions that produced the insurgency are addressed. Eg. Maoist activity in Andhra Pradesh revived after the collapse of the 2004 peace talks with the State government.
   The Fix: Tie any reduction in counter insurgency deployment to measured delivery of the development and land administration commitments in the affected districts.
3. Narcotics enforcement is a different discipline: Detecting and prosecuting cultivation needs financial investigation, revenue records and forensic chain of custody, not assault capability. Eg. Cannabis moving out of the Andhra Odisha Border area travels through transport and financing networks that sit outside a strike force’s remit.
   The Fix: Pair every deployment against cultivation with a narcotics investigation team empowered to pursue the trafficking and financing chain.
4. Surrender without rehabilitation produces returnees: A surrendered cadre with no livelihood and no protection has a route back to the organisation or into organised crime. Eg. Surrender and rehabilitation packages across Left Wing Extremism affected States differ widely in cash, housing and skilling terms.
   The Fix: Standardise a surrender and rehabilitation entitlement across the affected States, with a named district officer accountable for each case for a fixed period.
5. A deputation model limits institutional memory: Personnel rotate back to their parent units, so operational learning leaves with them unless it is written down. Eg. The training programme rested for nearly four decades on a single external consultant rather than on a standing doctrine cell.
   The Fix: Establish a permanent doctrine and after action review cell inside the force, staffed independently of the operational rotation.

Conclusion

The Greyhounds reaches the end of its founding mission with the insurgency it was raised against declared finished and no equivalent adversary in view. The decision in front of the State is whether a force built for armed contact is the right instrument for narcotics enforcement, or whether it is being retained because it exists. The deployment has already been committed to the former strongholds as roads reach them. The thing to watch is whether that deployment is paired with investigative and prosecutorial capacity, since cultivation is broken by cases rather than by operations.

Back2Basics: CPI (Maoist)

1. Formation: The Communist Party of India (Maoist) was formed in 2004 by the merger of the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre of India.
2. Legal status: It is banned as a terrorist organisation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, along with its front organisations.
3. Structure: It runs through a politburo and a central committee, with State committees below them, and its armed wing is the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army.
4. Area of operation: Its strength lay in the forested districts of central and eastern India, the belt security agencies describe as the Red Corridor.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2025, GS3, 10] The Government of India recently stated that Left Wing Extremism (LWE) will be eliminated by 2026. What do you understand by LWE and how are the people affected by it? What measures have been taken by the government to eliminate LWE?”