Jhiram Valley attack: Cong govt sets up SIT for fresh probe

The Congress government in Chhattisgarh on Wednesday set up a 10-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the 2013 Jhiram Valley Naxal attack in which several senior state leaders of the party were killed.

An order issued by Director General of Police D M Awasthi said the SIT will be headed by Inspector General of Police, Bastar Range, Vivekanand Sinha.

Deputy Inspector General (Anti-Naxal Operations) Sundarraj P, Commandant of Security Battalion, Mana Camp ML Kotwani, Deputy Commandant (3rd battalion, Amleshwar) Gayatri Singh, Deputy Superintendent of Police Rajeev Sharma, Inspector Ashish Shukla and Inspector (SIB) Premlal Sahu will be the SIT's members, the order said.

It will also consist of retired DSP Narendra Sharma, retired Deputy Director, Prosecution N N Chaturvedi and former Director of Forensic Science Lab, Sagar (Madhya Pradesh)MK Verma.

Naxals attacked a convoy of Congress leaders during the party's 'Parivartan Rally' campaign in the Jhiram Valley in Bastar distirct on May 25, 2013, killing 29 people including then state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, former leader of opposition Mahendra Karma and former Union minister Vidyacharan Shukla.

In his first cabinet meeting last month, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel had decided to set up an SIT to probe the incident.

Though the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had probed the attack, it did not cover the conspiracy angle, he had said.