Hailing the Supreme Court for rejecting the NIA plea on the Jheeram Ghati massacre case, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel said that the “political conspiracy” behind the attack will now be exposed.
The apex court on Tuesday rejected the National Investigative Agency’s (NIA) plea against the Chhattisgarh police’s probe into the Jheeram Ghati killings of Congress leaders in the state.
“I welcome the decision of the Supreme Court that they rejected the NIA’s plea. In 2016, the BJP was in power and they had declared in the assembly that there would be a CBI investigation, but the central government halted it,” CM Baghel said while talking to ANI on Tuesday.
“When we came into power, we formed an SIT on the basis of the evidence… NIA kept hindering via court… Finally, the Supreme Court said that Chhattisgarh police will investigate it… The political conspiracy will now be exposed,” he said.
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Mishra rejected the NIA appeal in connection with the 2013 Jheeram Ghati massacre.
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.
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.
Senior Congress leaders of the state like Vidyacharan Shukla, Nandkumar Patel, Mahendra Karma and many others including security forces personnel were among the 29 people killed by Naxals in Jheeram Valley on May 25, 2013.