10 to 5 job, desk and a laptop: Portrait of an ex-Maoist as a university official

His spectacles broke on the way to work. Sitting in his small cabin at Gondwana University, Mallojula Venugopal chuckles as he reaches for them: “Now I will have to get a new pair made.”

As the 70-year-old fusses over his glasses and his laptop, sitting behind a desk bare except for some newspapers (including The Indian Express), his crisp shirt firmly tucked in, his dark hair slickly combed down, the difference from his previous life couldn’t be starker.

It was almost exactly a year ago, on October 15, 2025, that Venugopal – a.k.a Sonu or Bhupathi, carrying a bounty of Rs 6 crore on his head – left the Maoist top ranks and walked out of the jungle to surrender. Maharashtra Chief Minister was present for his surrender, along with that of 60 other cadres and 50-odd weapons.

Venugopal is now a coordinator with Gondwana University’s Ekal (Gramsabha) Project and Centre. The university has 60,000 students across its campus and affiliated colleges, and the Ekal Centre works in coordination with the district administration as an outreach to gram sabhas.

Two men with the Gadchiroli police posted outside Venugopal’s cabin are the only hint of his past.

Mallojula Venugopal at work. (Photo by Ankita Deshkar)

He stumbled upon the job by chance, spotting a newspaper advertisement in May. The applicants needed to have cleared at least Class 12, possess knowledge of laws concerning tribal and rural areas, including PESA (Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act), the Community Forest Rights Act, MNREGS and Biodiversity Act, have experience with forest management and working with tribal and rural communities, and be willing to work in any taluka of Gadchiroli district.

Venugopal ticked all the boxes.

‘We got the Acts wrong’

He admits the irony of tackling some of the same issues via legal means that the Maoists once rallied against, such as the PESA in parts and Forest Rights Act (FRA). The two laws are meant to give gram sabhas greater say in local governance as well as forest land and resources.

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Venugopal says he now realises that the Maoist opposition to the Acts, uneven at times, was wrong, and claims that the CPI (Maoist) too had woken up to the resonance of land and forest rights issues among tribal communities. “If we had realised this earlier, people would have benefited,” he says.

Sanjay Meena, who was Gadchiroli Collector when the Ekal Centre was conceived, says it was meant to bridge the trust and communication gap between gram sabhas and the district administration, and Gondwana University was brought on board to train gram sabha members in issues such as community forest rights, biodiversity registers and forest and water conservation.

Mallojula Venugopal at work. (Photo by Ankita Deshkar)

Now Nagpur Metropolitan Region Development Authority Commissioner, Meena says: “The programme had four components: training gram sabhas, ensuring they had direct access to government schemes, promoting forest conservation, and enabling them to sell minor forest produce directly, without middlemen … We signed MoUs with around 750 gram sabhas out of the 1,200 in Gadchiroli. It was a huge exercise.”

Vice-Chancellor Prashant Bokare, who says they want the programme to continue, adds: “We formulated a special Board of Studies for the Ekal Centre, and it now has over 16 members.” Since December 2022, they have trained approximately 3,500 people from around 600 gram sabhas, helped 232 complete forest management plans, and enabled more than 100 to secure community forest rights.

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Naresh Madavi, a history professor and a coordinator with the Ekal Centre, says five people per gram sabha are trained, and in turn train others in their villages. Venugopal has been doing data collection and interacting with people, and “the work is on smoothly”, Madavi adds.

Gadchiroli Superintendent of Police (SP) M Ramesh says they wanted Venugopal to “settle”. “Wherever surrendered cadres are found eligible, we help. Sonu was found eligible in the context of the university.”

Venugopal says he feels good when villagers approach him to understand issues, seeing it as evidence of increasing awareness. “People can fight for their rights.”

There has been some expected opposition to Venugopal’s appointment. Datta Shirke of the Jan Sangharsha Samiti says, “They should rehabilitate him, but that does not mean giving him a high-ranking position… Police personnel and innocent tribals lost their lives in Maoist violence. Giving such a person a position is an insult to those affected.”

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Venugopal doesn’t deny the charge, but urges that his present role be judged separately. “I am working with all my heart.”

‘An old, normal couple’

Venugopal expresses satisfaction with several aspects of Maharashtra’s surrender and rehabilitation policy, including financial assistance, administrative support and help with acquiring land and basic documents.

While he hopes arrested comrades are released by the government, he says he is above all grateful, never imagining that he would live in a house again, forget work at a university. He recalls that some had called him a “traitor” when he surrendered, before many others had followed him. “This one year has proved how right I was.”

He still wakes up very early, around 4.30 am, and exercises for an hour before getting ready for work. He is in by 10 am and while his office ends at 5, spends evenings speaking to surrendered cadres and their families and following up on rehabilitation issues.

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Often, he visits his native place in Telangana and meets family members. His wife Tarakka expected to join a women’s self-help group, he smiles: “We live like any other old couple.”

And like any other old couple, Venugopal worries sometimes what will happen if his university job, which earns roughly Rs 30,000 per month and is temporary, is not renewed. So, the one-time B.Com student, who dropped out to join the Maoists, has enrolled for a BA course through Dr B R Ambedkar Open University in Telangana.

He hopes to understand the changes in the world and particularly how young people approach politics and social movements, he says. “Today’s political parties are learning from the youth,” he says.

His own learning, the 70-year-old former Maoist says, is that “there is no difference between the Left and the Right”. “During the Emergency, the Left and the Right had united. Now, people can’t tell who is Left and who is Right. Despite the talk of ‘Left, Left’, there is no work being done for the public aligned with any actual ideology.”

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As for him, “Sonu” and “Bhupathi” are in the past. “I am Venugopal.”