C’garh: Jhiram Ghati Naxal Attack Verdict On September 5
The court had reserved its order after the final hearing in the case, held on August 11, and is set to deliver the judgment on September five, officials said.
Raipur: Thirteen years after the Maoists ambushed a Congress convoy at Jhiram Ghati in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar, brutally killing 23 party leaders and four security personnel, a National Investigation Agency (NIA) court is set to pronounce its verdict in the sensational case on September five.
The court had reserved its order after the final hearing in the case, held on August 11, and is set to deliver the judgment on September five, officials said.
Around 150-armed cadres of outlawed CPI (Maoist) attacked the Congress convoy at Jhiram Ghati on May 25, 2013 killing 27 people including 23 state Congress leaders.
The Congress leaders were returning from Sukma in south Bastar after attending the ‘Parivartan Yatra’, the election campaign launched by the party ahead of the November 2013 assembly elections, when the Naxal attack came.
Later, the probe into the incident was handed over to the NIA.
The premier probe agency filed its initial chargesheet against nine arrested CPI (Maoist) members on September 25, 2014, followed by a supplementary chargesheet against 30 additional accused on September 28, 2015.
The trial in the case lasted nearly 12 years during which at least 294 hearings took place and 101 witnesses were examined.
The incident had become a major poll issue in the last three Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh.
While Congress alleged that the NIA had failed to probe the conspiracy angle in the incident, BJP accused former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel of doing nothing to bring the culprits to book during his regime.
Former BJP chief J P Nadda had earlier called the Jhiram Ghati Naxal attack, “an insider’s job”.
At the party’s political event in 2025, Mr. Nadda who was poll in-charge of BJP in Chhattisgarh when the incident took place, said that he was saying with full responsibility that people in Congress, who wanted to get their own people killed, were in touch with the Naxals and giving inside information in Congress.
Former chief minister and senior Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel alleged that the NIA was under pressure not to name two prominent Maoist leaders, Ganapathi and Ramanna, in the FIR filed in connection with the incident and said that the NIA had failed to probe the larger conspiracy in the incident.
Prominent among those slain the attack included Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee president Nand Kuamr Patel, his son Dinesh Patel, former minister and founder of anti-Naxal civil vigilante force Salwa Judum, Mahendra Karma, and former Union minister Vidya Charan Shukla.
