In a major blow to the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist in Andhra Pradesh, the organsation's state secretary Sambasivudu on Sunday surrendered before a senior police official. Confirming his surrender, Home Minister K Jana Reddy said that Sambasivudu will be produced before the media on Monday. He refused to share any more details.
 
According to sources, Sambasivudu, who carried a Rs ten lakh reward on his head, surrendered before Shivadhar Reddy, the Deputy Inspector General of the Special Investigations Bureau.
 
Sambasivudu took over as the chief of the underground organisation in 2006, after the incumbent state committee Secretary Burra Chennaiah alias Madhav and seven other Maoists were killed in an encounter in July 2006.
 
Sambasivudu, whose real name was K Ilaiah, had gone missing in January last year amid reports that the police had arrested him or he had been killed. But the police denied the report. His mother had even approached the Hyderabad High Court with a habeaus corpus petition.
 
According to sources, some political leaders from Telangana region acted as mediators to pave the way for his surrender.  His surrender came in the backdrop of reports that he had fallen out with the central leadership of the CPI-Maoist.

Sambasivudu was an expert in strategy and guerrilla warfare. He was the mastermind behind an assassination attempt on then chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu [Images] in October 2003 on Tirumala Ghat Road.
 
He is also the prime accused in the murder of Congress legislator C Narsi Reddy.