New Delhi: More than five years after its registration and despite clearance from the Supreme Court of India about three years ago, the Chhattisgarh Police’s conspiracy case into the Jheeram massacre of 2013 that wiped out the entire Congress brass is still awaiting a chargesheet, even as a Special NIA court in the state’s Jagdalpur has convicted all 10 charged by the central agency for the planning and execution of the attack.
The conspiracy case was filed in May 2020 on the complaint of one Jitendra Uday Mudliyar, son of Congress MLA Uday Mudliyar, one of the victims of the Naxal ambush on the convoy of Congress leaders in May 2013.
“The chargesheet has not been filed,” a Chhattisgarh Police officer confirmed to ThePrint, refusing to share further details on the status citing “sensitivity” of the case.
This was the second criminal case related to the Jheeram massacre and remains pending. In the attack, top Congress leaders, including the then Chhattisgarh Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, former Union minister Vidya Charan Shukla and Uday Mudliyar, were killed by Maoists.
A month after the FIR was filed at the Darbha police station, nearly seven years after the incident, the NIA had sought the case files from the Bastar Police citing a direct relation between the case and the earlier one probed by the NIA related to the massacre.
However, the Bastar Police refused to share case details, and a legal battle ensued going up to the Supreme Court, which upheld the Chhattisgarh High Court’s order in November 2023 allowing the state police to probe the case.
Responding to the pending probe in the FIR registered by him, Mudliyar alleged that the probe was compromised the day the BJP came to power. “You see the history of interventions by the BJP when they were in power and even when out of it,” Mudliyar told ThePrint. “They never wanted the NIA to get to the bottom of it, and they continue to do so. All the top Maoist leaders who were behind the killings have either surrendered or been arrested. Why aren’t they being questioned for the motive and conspiracy?” Mudliyar asked.
The case & its trail
Immediately after assuming office in the state in December 2018, Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel ordered a probe by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) led by the then Bastar Inspector General of Police Vivekanand Sinha. The team, which also included then DIG (anti-Naxal operations) Sundarraj Pattilingam, was to probe the sequence of events and conspiracy behind the Jheeram massacre.
Baghel termed the NIA’s probe an incomplete investigation because it did not examine the conspiracy behind it.
“The NIA did not carry out the investigation properly. The FIR that was filed at Darbha police station, the sections that were applied, and the people whose names were mentioned were not questioned,” the former state chief minister told reporters in Kanker earlier last week.
“The NIA did not even question all the people who were present at the incident site in Jheeram Ghati. They didn’t take a single step to find out who was behind this conspiracy. The court will base its decision solely on the report. The BJP is continuously working to suppress it,” he added.
Nearly two years after the Congress came to power, Jitendra Mudliyar registered the FIR at the same Darbha Police Station in May 2020. In his police complaint, Mudliyar alleged a huge conspiracy behind the massacre and raised suspicions of involvement of some non-Maoist players.
The Bastar district police lodged a case under sections 302 (murder) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, and the state police handed over the case to an SIT formed under the Bastar IG. Weeks after the registration, the Ministry of Home Affairs ordered the NIA to take over the case, invoking section 8 of the National Investigation Agency Act, which authorises the agency to probe any case connected to one already under its investigation.
When this was refused, the agency moved the special NIA court seeking instructions to the Bastar Police to hand over the files. However, the court junked the agency’s plea in August that year.
During the hearing of the agency’s appeal, counsel for the government argued that the FIR was filed under sections 302 and 120-B—which are not scheduled offences under the NIA Act, 2008—and hence the state police was not bound to hand over the case files. Moreover, Mudliyar’s counsel Sudeep Shrivastava argued that the NIA had not investigated the conspiracy angle in the previous case it took over which was related to the massacre.
He had also argued that the agency’s probe was focused only on Maoist cadres and other associated factors such as lack of security for the motorcade of the leaders, and that such an incident could not have occurred without external aid and information were not issues touched upon during the probe.
The Chhattisgarh High Court had dismissed the NIA’s appeal in March 2022, and the Supreme Court had also dismissed the agency’s appeal in November 2023.
Days after the Supreme Court’s verdict, senior BJP leader and former CM Raman Singh had said that the case would be probed immediately in case his party returned to power in the state. The next month, Vishnu Deo Sai took oath as the Chief Minister as the BJP stormed back to power in the state.
The chargesheet into the second case related to the Jheeram massacre remains pending.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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