Indian officials said Wednesday that more than 100 Maoist rebels had surrendered, weeks ahead of New Delhi’s March 31 deadline to eliminate the insurgency entirely.

India is waging an intense campaign against the last remnants of the Naxalite rebellion, named after the village in the Himalayan foothills where the Maoist-inspired insurgency began nearly six decades ago.

‘108 Maoist leaders and cadres of various ranks have surrendered today,’ said Sundarraj Pattilingam, senior police official of Chhattisgarh state, where the rebels laid down their arms.

Acting on intelligence and information from the surrendered rebels, security forces recovered gold worth about $1,85,000 along with around $3,90,000 in cash from several Maoist hideouts, he said.

‘This is the largest ever recovery of such an amount of cash from a single dump,’ he said, adding that over 2,500 rebels had surrendered since January 2024, as part of India’s renewed push to quell the rebellion.

More than 12,000 rebels, soldiers and civilians have died in the conflict since a handful of villagers rose up against their feudal lords in 1967.

The rebellion controlled nearly a third of the country with an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 fighters at its peak in the mid-2000s, but it has been dramatically weakened in recent years.