13 years after Madanwada Maoist ambush, judicial inquiry blames IG’s negligence

RAIPUR: Close to 13 years after 29 Chhattisgarh police personnel including the Rajnandgaon district superintendent of police were killed in an encounter with Maoists in Madanwada, a one-member judicial commission has laid the blame at the door of senior IPS officer Mukesh Gupta, who was inspector general of the range at the time, citing “repeated instances of carelessness and negligence.”

The findings of the report were tabled before the Chhattisgarh assembly by chief minister Bhupesh Baghel on Wednesday. Gupta, currently a special director general of the Chhattisgarh police who is also facing allegations of illegal phone tapping during a probe conducted by him, called the report a “blatant lie.”

In January 2020, the Chhattisgarh government constituted a commission of inquiry into the Maoist ambush in July 2009 that killed SP Vinod Choubey and 28 other police officials. Choubey was posthumously awarded the Kirti Chakra. The inquiry was headed by retired high court judge, Shambhu Nath Srivastava, who submitted the 109-page report to the state government on February 1, 2022.

“As per the records available, the police force present at the spot just watched as mute spectators and they also allowed the Maoists to do whatever they wanted… This is also very sad that even in the presence of the Inspector General of Police, the Maoists took away the arms, bullet proof jackets and boots from the SP’s and other bodies of police personnel,” the inquiry report said.

The report also said that if the inspector general in command had acted wisely, the result would have been entirely different. “He had sufficient time to call units of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Chhattisgarh Armed Force (CAF) to use them…The video footage released by the Maoists, included as evidence in the report, clearly point to repeated instances of carelessness and negligence,” Srivastava wrote in his report.

The report however acknowledged the courage shown by Choubey and said that he had moved forward against the Maoists and sacrificed his life taking them on.

Reached for comment, Gupta said, “The report presented in assembly on Wednesday is a blatant lie and completely biased. The person who was heading the inquiry was prejudiced because I had filed a petition in Bilaspur high court in 2017 against him and levelled serious criminal allegations. The case is still pending with the high court. And lastly, I was not given a chance to explain the details about the incident and my statement was never recorded.”

Meanwhile, another judicial commission report tabled before the assembly on Wednesday, into the arson in the three villages of Tadmetla, Morpalli and Timmapuram where over 200 homes were burnt between March 11 and 16, 2011, said that there was no “conclusive evidence to blame anyone for the arson.” The commission, headed by justice TP Sharma was formed in May 2011, to look into the arson incident which also left three police personnel and an alleged Maoist dead. The commission said, “Since there is no evidence of who burned the houses, no one could be held accountable for the arson.”

The commission was also mandated to look into an attack on Swami Agnivesh, which took place on March 26, 2011 in Dornapal of Sukma district when he was leading a fact-finding team. It said that the attack “was not pre meditated” and that the case is under investigation by the central bureau of investigation (CBI).