Thirteen years after Maoists ambushed a Congress convoy in Bastar’s Jhiram Valley and killed 29 people, a special NIA court has sentenced all ten convicts to death. The convictions came on September 5 under the penal code, the anti-terror law, the Arms Act and the Explosive Substances Act, after a trial in which 101 witnesses were examined. The defence has said it will appeal, and no death sentence can be carried out until a High Court confirms it.
Jagdalpur: A special National Investigation Agency court in Jagdalpur has sentenced all ten convicts to death in the 2013 Jhiram Valley Maoist attack, one of the deadliest incidents of left-wing extremist violence in Chhattisgarh, in which 29 people, including senior Congress leaders and security personnel, were killed.
The Special NIA Judge at Jagdalpur had convicted the ten accused on September 5 and reserved the question of sentence for September 16, when the quantum was pronounced. The defence has stated that it will challenge both the conviction and the sentence before the High Court.
The attack
The attack took place on May 25, 2013, when armed Maoists ambushed the convoy of the Congress party’s Parivartan Yatra on a national highway in the Jhiram Valley, within the limits of the Darbha police station in Bastar district, as the convoy was returning ahead of the Assembly elections. Among those killed were the then Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee president Nand Kumar Patel and his son Dinesh, former Leader of the Opposition Mahendra Karma, former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla and former MLA Uday Mudaliyar. Dozens of others were injured. The attack was widely regarded as among the gravest political massacres in the country’s recent history.
The case was initially investigated by the Bastar police and, given its scale, transferred to the NIA, which filed its charge sheet before the Jagdalpur court in September 2014. Proceedings were initiated against 11 accused; one died during the trial, and the case continued against the remaining ten, two of them women. The NIA examined 101 witnesses over the course of the trial.
The charges
The convictions were recorded under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code, including Section 302 for murder, together with the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, the Arms Act and the Explosive Substances Act. The UAPA provisions invoked, as reported, included Sections 16, 18, 20, 38(2), 39(2) and 40(2), which deal with terrorist acts, conspiracy, membership of a terrorist organisation and related offences; the Arms Act charges were under Sections 25 and 27; and the Explosive Substances Act charges under Sections 3, 4 and 5. According to the NIA, its investigation established that armed cadres of the banned CPI (Maoist) carried out the ambush.
The political dispute
The verdict has drawn sharply differing reactions along political lines, and both are recorded here as statements of the respective parties.
Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Chhattisgarh welcomed the outcome, describing it as a vindication of the NIA’s investigation. Senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, by contrast, said justice remained incomplete, contending that the NIA had listed a far larger number of accused and that sentencing ten cadres did not address what the Congress has long maintained was a larger conspiracy behind the attack. He and other Congress leaders have pressed for an investigation into that alleged conspiracy and into what they describe as security and intelligence lapses. The BJP has rejected the conspiracy allegations as politically motivated.
Independent commentators have also pointed to unresolved questions, including how the attackers obtained information about the convoy’s movement, whether the full network behind the ambush was identified, and claims regarding accused who were said to have been elsewhere. These are matters of public debate and of the parties’ contentions; they are not findings of the Court, which decided the guilt only of the ten before it.
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What happens next
A death sentence passed by a trial court is not final. Under Section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the corresponding provision of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, a sentence of death must be submitted to the High Court for confirmation, and the sentence cannot be executed unless the High Court confirms it. The convicts also have a right of appeal, which the defence has said it will exercise, and thereafter the ordinary remedies up to the Supreme Court, followed by the constitutional mercy jurisdiction of the Governor and the President.
The death penalty in India is confined, under the Supreme Court’s Bachan Singh framework, to the rarest of rare cases, where the alternative of life imprisonment is unquestionably foreclosed after weighing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of both the crime and the criminal. Whether the Jhiram Valley sentences meet that standard is precisely what the confirmation and appellate process exists to test, and it is at that stage that the trial court’s reasoning on sentence will be examined.
For now, the position is that a trial court has convicted ten persons and sentenced them to death for one of the worst attacks the state has seen, that the sentence awaits High Court confirmation, and that an appeal has been announced. The convicts retain the presumption in their favour on appeal and the full protection of the confirmation process.
Case: NIA v. Pramila Modiyam and Others, arising from the 2013 Jhiram Valley attack [Special NIA Court, Jagdalpur]
Court: Special NIA Court, District and Sessions Court, Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh
Convictions: September 5, 2026 | Sentence: September 16, 2026
Offences: Section 302 and other provisions of the IPC; Sections 16, 18, 20, 38(2), 39(2), 40(2) UAPA; Sections 25, 27 Arms Act; Sections 3, 4, 5 Explosive Substances Act
Status: Ten convicts sentenced to death. Sentence subject to High Court confirmation. Defence has announced an appeal.