NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a plea by the National Investigation Agency against the Chhattisgarh Police's probe into an FIR lodged in 2020 alleging a larger political conspiracy in the 2013 Maoist attack which claimed lives of several top Indian National Congress (INC) leaders. The Court has thus allowed the police probe to continue.
A bench of Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra dismissed a petition by the NIA against the Chhattisgarh High Court's order of March 2, 2022, in this regard.
Following arguments by Additional Solicitor General S V Raju, for the NIA, and Senior Advocate ANS Nadkarni and Advocate Sumeer Sodhi for Chhattisgarh government and Advocate Sudiep Srivastava, the bench upheld the High Court's order.
"We are not inclined to entertain the Special Leave Petition under Article 136 of the Constitution," the bench said.
According to the state government's counsel, the NIA never investigated the political conspiracy angle since 2013 and had in fact closed the case.
They also said that even the previous political regime in 2016 had written to the Central government to initiate CBI investigation since NIA had not done its job.
In 2013 in the Jheeram Ghaati incident, 27 persons including several Congress leaders had died in a Naxalite attack. The case was investigated and closed by the NIA and the trial in the matter is going on.
After a complaint by the son of one of the deceased Congress leaders, an FIR was lodged by the state police on allegations that the NIA had failed to investigate a larger political conspiracy angle. The NIA moved the trial court for transfer of the state polices FIR to itself, 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 NIA's petition. The Supreme Court had initially granted a stay on further investigation by the state police in 2020.
On its part, the NIA contended that 27 persons were killed by Naxalites in 2013 and the matter was investigated by it, however after seven years, the complainant has come forward saying that there was a larger conspiracy.
It also claimed the complainant could have pressed for further investigation and not lodged a fresh FIR, if he was aggrieved that the larger political conspiracy was not being investigated by NIA.
