Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Chhattisgarh’s Jagdalpur, on September 16, sentenced 10 convicts to death in the Jheeram Ghati Maoist attack case of 2013 that had killed 27 people, including top Congress leaders from the state.
This is perhaps the first time that as many Maoists have been handed the death penalty in any case. After many twists and turns in the case, the court held the 10 accused guilty on September 4.
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The attack in Bastar on May 25, 2013 had waylaid a group of Congress heavyweights travelling in a campaign convoy ahead of elections. Among the 27 killed were former MP Mahendra Karma, former Union minister V.C. Shukla and Congress state unit chief Nand Kumar Patel.
The Congress has faced many depletions, but none as stark and traumatic as this—an entire section of the party wiped out in a massacre.
The verdict, though, has not laid to rest the arguments that have been in the air for over a decade. The Congress has always claimed a conspiracy behind the attack, something that has bedevilled Chhattisgarh politics for years. The plain-vanilla verdict has left it dissatisfied since that angle, relating to certain eyewitness accounts, was never probed.
As the Congress leaders’ convoy moved to Jagdalpur from Sukma, Maoists from the Darbha division committee triggered a landmine blast followed by a volley of gunshots. As return fire from security personnel ebbed, the Maoists, said to be around 250 in number, came down and began looking for Karma. He had been a champion of the controversial Salwa Judum, a violent counter-insurrection army formed out of tribal people that was later banned by the Supreme Court.
The Maoists took Karma a little distance into the forest and executed him. They also took Patel and his son Dinesh to a hillock and executed them. Ex-MLA Uday Mudaliar was killed in the firing while Shukla was injured and died days later in a Delhi hospital. Kawasi Lakma, an MLA, escaped.
Eyewitnesses claimed the commander who led the attack, Vinod, alias Vinodanna, received a confirmation to go ahead with the executions—a fact central to the conspiracy theories. He died during the Covid pandemic, according to the Chhattisgarh police.
Back in 2013, the BJP ruled the state—it also won the year-end election. Soon after the incident, it appointed a single-member judicial commission led by Justice Prashant Mishra. The NIA also filed a chargesheet in September 2014, soon after the United Progressive Alliance lost the Lok Sabha polls.
No conspiracy angle was found. Over 30 Maoists were booked—it proceeded like an open-and-shut case; no grey areas. But then the Congress took over the state’s reins in 2018. The new government extended the commission’s term, added terms of reference and, after Justice Mishra’s 2021 report, reconstituted the panel. But next year, in response to a petition from BJP leader Dharamlal Kaushik, the high court stayed the commission’s work.
After the verdict, former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel asks why the BJP had rushed to quash that commission and why the case excluded top Maoists. “Gudsa Usendi was not named nor was Ramanna (since dead) questioned,” said the Congress leader.
Chhattisgarh chief minister Vishnu Deo Sai replies that Baghel should have presented evidence, if he had any, to the court. To which Sushil Anand Shukla, Congress spokesperson, Chhattisgarh, said: “We are considering all legal options on appealing and expanding the scope of the probe.”
Former deputy chief minister T.S. Singhdeo told INDIA TODAY that although he had not been called by the judicial commission to depose, he did so out of his own accord and got his statement recorded. “I was barely five minutes ahead of the convoy. In the previous two days of the yatra, all security protocols, including road-opening parties, were followed. On the fateful day, I noticed that there was no security arrangement along the route from Sukma to Jagdalpur via Jheeram. Who ordered the security to be withdrawn on the last day is what should have been probed. If there was negligence, that too should have been probed,” he said.
Those sentenced to death are Mukka Mandvi, Kosa Kawasi, Chamru Nag, Mahadev Nag, Madkami Deva, Aayta Markam, Joga Madkami, Chaitu Lekam, Pramila Modiyam and Sumitra Modiyam. The convicts have 30 days to appeal against the sentencing in the high court.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA