A West Bengal police 'spotter' on Thursday evening confirmed that elusive Maoist leader Kishenji, aka Koteshwar Rao, was killed and his body recovered.
Sources told DNA that the West Bengal police had received specific inputs on Kishenji's whereabouts. Technical intelligence also helped in pinpointing his whereabouts. Central forces were called in after the intelligence report. Kishenji was considerably weakened in an attack earlier, which helped the police nail him this time, sources said.
Kishenji had reportedly moved to Jharkhand for some time and had recently returned to Bengal.
Security circles see Kishenji's death to be the 'beginning of the end' for the Maoists in West Bengal and an end of erstwhile 'Party Unity', one of the three factions of CPI (Maoists).
