内容摘要：But having recently announced Picture Imperfect, an adult sequel to her 1999 children's book, The Illustrated Mum, it doesn't look like an adult book based on Beaker will follow suit.

But having recently announced Picture Imperfect, an adult sequel to her 1999 children's book, The Illustrated Mum, it doesn't look like an adult book based on Beaker will follow suit.

Basavaraju's death marks more than a tactical victory - it signals a breach in the Maoists' last line of defence in Bastar, the forested heartland where the group carved out its fiercest stronghold since the 1980s.Maoists, also known as "Naxalites" after the 1967 uprising in Naxalbari village in West Bengal, have regrouped over the decades to carve out a "red corridor" across central and eastern India - stretching from Jharkhand in the east to Maharashtra in the west and spanning more than a third of the country's districts. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh had described the insurgency as India's "greatest internal security threat".

The armed struggle for Communist rule has claimed nearly 12,000 lives since 2000, according to the. The rebels say they fight for the rights of indigenous tribes and the rural poor, citing decades of state neglect and land dispossession.The Maoist movement - officially known as Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) - took formal shape in 2004 with the merger of key Marxist-Leninist groups into the CPI (Maoist). This party traces its ideological roots to a 1946 peasant uprising in the southern state of Telangana.

Now, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government pledging to end Maoism by March 2026, the battle-hardened rebellion stands at a crossroads: could this truly be the end - or just another pause in its long, bloody arc?"There will be a lull. But Marxist-Leninist movements have transcended such challenges when the top leadership of the Naxalites were killed in the 70s and yet we are talking about Naxalism," said N Venugopal, a journalist, social scientist and long-time observer of the movement, who is both a critic and sympathiser of the Maoists.

One of the senior-most officials in India's home ministry who oversaw anti-Maoist operations, MA Ganapathy, holds a different view.

"At its core, the Maoist movement was an ideological struggle - but that ideology has lost traction, especially among the younger generation. Educated youth aren't interested anymore," says Mr Ganapathy.Mr Monaghan believes communication from the MOD was not good enough.

"Everyone was kept in the dark," he said."They knew nothing about [pensions] when they were young.

"We never had a brief on pensions. We were never given any insight and probably we didn't have any interest because I was a young man."The Equalities for Veterans Association was disbanded a few years ago – because of a lack of success and the dwindling number of surviving veterans from that period.