The recent encounter between police commandos and Maoists that killed four ultras in Attappady forests in Palakkad district in Kerala is a grim reminder that the Left extremist movement is far from over in south India.Manivasagam, one of those killed in the encounter, was earlier involved in the Uthangarai bomb blast case in Tamil Nadu in 2002. He was in prison till 2008. After acquittal in the case, he was again arrested in 2012 in other cases and released on bail a year later. He had been underground since then. About a dozen known Maoists from Tamil Nadu are missing for more than a decade.Unlike Chhattisgarh and border areas of Odisha and West Bengal, Maoists are few and far between in the south. The vestiges of the movement also lack the sting to inflict deep wounds on the social fabric in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Still, it is a matter of concern for security agencies that in all these states and more so in Kerala, there have been intermittent efforts by Maoists to re-establish their areas of influence in the last 10 years.The Maoist leadership, for years, has been withdrawing cadres from Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and redeploying them in Kerala. The tri-junction of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the Western Ghats is an area of focus for the outfit. It has established apology for groups in Bhavani, Siruvani, Kabini and Nadu Kani under the Western Ghats Special Zonal Committee. Frequent encounters with police of southern states have weakened the movement though. But it has made significant inroads into tribal regions of Kannur, Palakkad, Wayanad and Malappuram districts in Kerala.Kerala had been feeling the heat for some time for what the Centre perceived as the state’s kid gloves approach in handling Maoists. The state finally acted after intelligence agencies from other states made inroads into Kerala to keep track of missing Maoists from their regions.The arrest of the party’s politburo member Malla Raji Reddy at Angamali in Ernakulam district in December 2007 exposed the presence of the Kerala state organising committee of the Maoist movement with Roopesh alias Praveen as the secretary. Later, the killings of central committee member Kuppu Devaraj and a woman leader Ajitha in Nilambur forests of Kerala in 2016 jolted the movement. Devaraj was in charge of the groups, while two other central committee members supervised activities in the strategically important tri-junction.Roopesh and his wife Shyna, both from Thrissur in Kerala, were arrested in Coimbatore in 2014. Earlier this year, C P Jaleel, a newly-inducted cadre was gunned down by police at Vythini in Wayanad. Still, Kerala has a long way to go in curbing the menace, because the front organisations have significant presence in many regions.From Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, some 230 identified Maoists are missing, as per police records. While about half of them are working as underground cadres of the outfit in the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border and AP-Odisha border, there is no information available about many."There are no permanent Maoist camps in Telangana. They operate from Chhattisgarh and keep trying to enter Telangana. We push them back through continuous vigil and area domination. But their frontal organisations are still active and we have been arresting many," said additional director general (law and order) of police, Telangana, Jitender. Hyderabad city police commissioner Anjani Kumar said several front organisations of Maoists like students’ and workers’ unions, NGOs, teachers’ and lawyers’ bodies were under constant police watch. In the past two months, Hyderabad police arrested nine members of Telangana Vidyarthi Vedika and Telangana Praja Front for alleged Maoist links. Of the 110 members of Telangana State Committee of the Maoist outfit, only 25 are from the state. A vast majority of them are from Chhattisgarh, said Kumar. Except in Bhadradri Kothgudem and Jayashankar Bhupalapally districts, Maoist presence is not there anywhere else in Telangana, he said.Karnataka has only a handful of known Maoists and all of them are operating in other states. Developmental activities in the erstwhile Naxal dominated villages have helped curb the growth of extremism, said superintendent of police R Chetan, in charge of anti-Maoist operations in Karnataka. The movement has lost its significance in Karnataka, said Harsha Kumar Kugwe, an activist in Shivamogga. However, those who surrendered before police in the past are facing challenges in leading a normal life. They do not find time for anything else after attending court cases, said Kalkuli Vittala Hegde, an activist in Sringeri.