Supreme Court refuses to interfere with Chhattisgarh HC order on Jheeram Ghaati massacre

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has refused to interfere with the Chhattisgarh High Court order, which dismissed the National Investigation Agency (NIA) plea regarding the 2013 Jheeram Ghaati Naxal attack.

A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra on Tuesday rejected the NIA appeal in connection with the Jheeram Ghaati massacre.

In 2013, 27 people, including Congress leaders, were killed in the Naxalite attack in the Jheeram Ghaati in Bastar district. Then state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, former leader of the opposition Mahendra Karma and former Union minister Vidyacharan Shukla were among those killed. The case was investigated by the NIA and a trial was going on.

On a complaint by the son of a deceased Congress leader, an FIR was lodged by the State Police on allegations that the NIA had failed to investigate a larger political conspiracy. The NIA moved the Trial Court for the transfer of the State Police's FIR to the NIA since, according to the NIA, the state FIR was connected to their investigation. The trial court as well as the High Court of Chhattisgarh rejected the petition of the NIA. NIA has moved against the trial court order. The Supreme Court initially granted a stay of further investigation by the State Police in 2020. Additional Solicitor General SV Raju appeared for the NIA. Advocates ANS Nadkarni and Sumeer Sodhi represented the State of Chhattisgarh and told the Court that the NIA had never investigated the political conspiracy angle since 2013 and had in fact closed the case.

The Supreme Court was informed that even the previous political regime in 2016 had written to the Central Government to initiate a CBI investigation since the NIA had not done its job. After hearing the parties at length, the bench headed by the CJI dismissed the Special Leave Petition filed by the NIA.