Operation Green Hunt

Battle context

Operation Green Hunt, launched on 1 September 2009, represented the Indian state's most concentrated coordinated offensive against the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in the decades-long Naxalite insurgency. Deploying approximately 80,000 government paramilitary and state forces against an estimated 11,500 Maoist combatants, the operation signaled a shift from reactive policing to an all-out offensive posture. Casualties on both sides — 1,435 government personnel and 2,266 Maoists — indicate sustained, attritional engagement across the affected regions. The operation became a reference point in the insurgency for the scale of state commitment and the limits of conventional force projection against a dispersed rural guerrilla movement.