The lull in Chhattisgarh politics after weeks of high-voltage campaigning for the Assembly election has been broken with the ruling Congress and the BJP taking potshots at each other over a recent Supreme Court judgment.
The court on November 21 had dismissed a plea of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against the Chhattisgarh police’s probe into an FIR alleging larger conspiracy in the 2013 Jheeram valley attack.
Twenty-nine people were killed on May 25, 2013 when Naxals attacked a convoy of Congress leaders at Jheeram valley in Darbha area of Bastar district. The dead included then State Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, former Leader of the Opposition Mahendra Karma, and former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla. The attack took place when political campaigning for the then Assembly election was on and the party leaders were returning after a ‘Parivartan rally’ in Bastar district.
Legal tussle
The Bastar police then lodged an FIR over the incident and the NIA subsequently took over the probe into it. After completing its investigation, the NIA filed a chargesheet, based on which a trial commenced in the case.
On May 26, 2020, another FIR was lodged based on a complaint by Jitendra Mudliyar, son of Congress leader Uday Mudliyar, who was killed in the attack, that the NIA had failed to probe the larger conspiracy angle in the incident.
The central agency later filed an application in a special NIA court in Jagdalpur seeking directions to the Bastar police not to proceed with the investigation into the second FIR and hand over all documents pertaining to it to the agency. However, the special court rejected the NIA’s application in 2020, following which the agency approached the High Court, which also rejected its plea last year. It then moved the Supreme Court.
Dismissing the NIA plea, a Bench of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said, “Sorry, we would not like to interfere. Dismissed.”
Vying for political mileage
While the judgment has been welcomed by the Congress leadership and the families of the victims of the attack, the BJP has been trying to thwart attempts by the ruling party to gain any political mileage from the court order.
The verdict has sparked fresh political wrangling in the State between former Chief Minister and BJP national vice president Raman Singh and Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel.
Soon after the order, Mr. Singh issued a statement that the matter will be investigated immediately after the formation of the BJP government following the counting of votes on December 3. “The Congress government remained here for five years. The person [Baghel] who kept talking about having evidence in his pocket, did not bring out all those documents... In the coming time, a BJP government will be formed, and this matter will be investigated immediately,” he said.
Mr. Baghel, in turn, accused the BJP, which was in power when the attack took place, and Mr. Singh of obstructing investigation into the case. “The act of creating obstacles was done by him [Singh],” he said, adding that the judgment has cleared the path for the Chhattisgarh police to conduct a probe into the larger conspiracy angle in the 2013 attack.
The NIA probed the case, a commission conducted an inquiry, but no one investigated the “larger political conspiracy” behind the incident, he said.
“When Chhattisgarh Police started the investigation, NIA approached the court to disrupt it. Today the path has been cleared. Now Chhattisgarh Police will investigate this. Who had hatched what conspiracy with whom? Everything will become clear. Once again a tribute to the martyrs of Jheeram,” Mr. Baghel said in a post on X.
Earlier, after the court order, the Congress had held a press conference in Raipur and termed the incident the “biggest political massacre in the history of democracy”. While it questioned the BJP’s role in the State as well as at the Centre, accusing it of failing to prevent the attack and then scuttling a fair probe, the BJP hit back by saying if the Congress had other evidence, why didn’t it share it with the NIA.
‘Hopeful of justice’
Meanwhile, victims of the attack are hopeful of justice after the verdict. Jagdalpur-based Congress State general secretary Malkit Gaidu, who sustained bullet injuries in the incident, said he expects swift justice now as the NIA probe did not include aspects that would have unearthed the exact nature of the conspiracy. “They [NIA] asked us only about the incident and not if we felt there was a security lapse or not,” he said.
Shiv Singh Thakur, another victim who sustained multiple bullet injuries, said while the NIA never approached him to record his statement, a Special Investigation Team formed by the State government had interviewed him for nine hours, asked for written submissions, documented all possibilities of a conspiracy, and even cross-examined him.
