By Mehul Malpani

Copyright thehindu

A 25-year-old man was allegedly abducted and killed by Maoists on suspicion of being a police informer in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat district, officers said on Thursday (September 18, 2025). Two notes have also been recovered with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) taking responsibility of the act.

According to the police, Devendra Yadav was abducted on Tuesday (September 16, 2025) around 7 p.m. near his village Chauria under Lanji police station area when he was attending to his cattle with another man. His body, with several injury marks, was recovered on Thursday (September 18, 2025).

Shiyaz K.M., Commandant of the State’s anti-Maoist Hawk Force, told The Hindu that the Malajkhand dalam (unit) of the GRB (Gondia-Rajnandgaon-Balaghat) division of the Maoists has claimed responsibility of the act and an FIR under murder charges has been lodged.

Two notes were also recovered from the place he was abducted from. One of the notes, seen by The Hindu, accused Yadav of passing on CPI (Maoist)’s information to the police and declared a “death sentence” for him, while threatening others against mingling with the police.

The other note accused the police of “displacing, looting and provoking the poor to fight each other”.

Mr. Shiyaz, however, denied that the individual was an informant. “He used to supply milk products to nearby areas, including some police checkposts, but never supplied any information. On Tuesday (September 16, 2025), two men had come to Devendra and his friend, and accused the former of passing on information to the police and took him with them,” he said.

The officer said that a post-mortem examination is being conducted to ascertain how he was killed. “We have launched search parties to trace the accused. Once the post-mortem report is out, we will also look for the weapons used to kill him,” he added.

Mr. Shiyaz said that this is the first such incident in the district since 2023.