Centre blocking 2013 Naxal attack probe, says Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel

NEW DELHI: Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel has accused the Centre of blocking a fresh probe by the state government into the conspiracy behind the Jhiram Ghati Naxal attack, which wiped out Congress’s top leadership in the state in 2013.
Baghel said the Union home ministry had denied repeated requests to transfer the case and share investigation reports of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which had charged 39 people, but closed the probe “prematurely”.

Speaking exclusively to ET, Baghel said: “The Centre is not allowing us (the state government) to open the case and investigate the conspiracy behind the attack. Since the time we have come to power, we are trying to fulfil our promise of initiating an independent probe.

But the home ministry has denied our request of transferring the case or even sharing probe reports with us.” In the run-up to the assembly polls in Chhattisgarh in November, Congress had promised to set up a special investigation team to probe the massacre. In January this year, an SIT was formed under Bastar IG Vivekanand Sinha.

Baghel said: “We have been communicating with the home ministry over the last four months. We have even communicated that NIA had prematurely closed the investigation. NIA did not even bother to go into the conspiracy angle of the massacre before closing the case. This is why we had sought case files. But this has been denied and our SIT has been unable to begin its probe.” Declining the state government’s bid to re-open the case, the home ministry had said it “had not found appropriate to transfer the case back to the state government” as the trial was ongoing.

Baghel said: “They have sought details of new proof that we have found and have asked us to send it. We are saying the case has been botched by the previous government and vital proof has been lost over the last six years, but we are still trying to probe.”

The Centre had told the state that it could “associate itself with NIA under provisions of Section 7 (a) of NIA Act, 2008, for further investigation in case some new facts have come to its notice.”

In a letter to the union home secretary, the Chhattisgarh government wrote that “it was incumbent on NIA to have investigated the conspirational (sic) designs, in the immediate past of the incident, with an open eye and mind, to examine the possible involvement of other persons along with the Maoists... However, despite sufficient time having elapsed, the investigation by NIA, in public estimate, moved with a snail’s pace.”