10 Convicts Sentenced to Death in 2013 Jhiram Ghati Maoist Attack That Killed 29

A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Jagdalpur has sentenced ten people to death for their role in the 2013 Maoist ambush at Jhiram Ghati in Chhattisgarh's Bastar district, an attack that killed 29 people and all but decimated the state's Congress leadership.

On May 25, 2013, Maoist insurgents ambushed a convoy of Congress leaders on a national highway as it returned from a 'Parivartan Rally'. The attack took place in the Jhiram valley, within the jurisdiction of the Darbha police station.

Among those killed were the then state Congress president Nand Kumar Patel and his son Dinesh, former Leader of the Opposition Mahendra Karma, former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla and former MLA Uday Mudliyar. Security personnel and civilians travelling in the convoy also lost their lives.

Earlier this month, Special Judge Abhay Singh Rajput convicted ten accused, including two women. On Wednesday, the court handed all ten the death penalty under seven of the 24 charges they faced, along with a fine of Rs 800 each. The execution will remain pending until the high court issues its order, and the convicts will stay in central jail in the interim. They have 30 days to appeal the verdict in the high court.

The case rested on statements recorded from 101 witnesses and a substantial volume of documentary evidence. The NIA's investigation found that armed cadres of the banned CPI (Maoist), working with its local divisions, had entered into a criminal conspiracy to target and kill senior Congress leaders and security personnel in the Parivartan Yatra convoy, as part of the outfit's Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign.

The massacre has remained a live political fault line in Chhattisgarh. Former chief minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel has repeatedly questioned the investigation, alleging a larger conspiracy behind the attack and arguing that an independent probe by the state's Special Investigation Team could have identified those behind it.

Former BJP national vice-president and ex-chief minister Raman Singh rejected that line, saying Baghel did not care about the case and was only seeking to play politics over it.