The court in Jagdalpur imposed the death penalty under seven charges and a fine of Rs 800 each. The sentences need high court confirmation, and the convicts have 30 days to appeal.
BY PC Bureau
September 16: Thirteen years after the Jhiram Ghati ambush tore through Chhattisgarh’s Congress leadership, a special NIA court has sentenced 10 convicts to death for one of the deadliest Maoist attacks in the state.
The massacre took place on May 25, 2013, when Maoists ambushed a Congress convoy returning from a Parivartan Rally on a national highway in Jhiram Ghati, under the Darbha police station limits in Bastar district.
Twenty-nine people were killed in the attack, which virtually wiped out the party’s top leadership in the state.Among the dead were then state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, his son Dinesh, former Leader of the Opposition Mahendra Karma, former Union minister Vidya Charan Shukla and former MLA Uday Mudliyar.
Several security personnel and civilians were also killed.The trial stretched over years and rested on extensive evidence. Statements of 101 witnesses were recorded, and a large volume of documents was examined.
Earlier this month, Special Judge Abhay Singh Rajput of the NIA special court in Jagdalpur convicted all 10 accused, including two women.On Wednesday, the court sentenced the 10 convicts to death under seven of the 24 charges against them and imposed a fine of Rs 800 each. The death sentences will be executed only after confirmation by the high court. Until then, the convicts will remain in central jail. They have 30 days to file an appeal.
The verdict closes a long legal chapter, but questions over the wider conspiracy remain. Several senior Maoist leaders named in the case were never convicted in this trial, after surrendering or being killed in later encounters. Congress leaders have called the outcome incomplete justice, saying those who planned the ambush have still not been held to account.
