RAIPUR: On the order of the union home ministry the National Investigation Agency (NIA) will probe into the killing of Chhattisgarh BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi from Dantewada.
According to the NIA website, the case has been registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, Indian Arms Act and UA(P) Act 1967. The agency had registered the case under the title ‘death of Bheema Mandavi in a IED blast by CPI (Maoist), Dantewada’.
Barely two days before the first phase of polling in Bastar Lok Sabha constituency, the BJP MLA and four policemen were killed in a powerful IED blast triggered by the Maoists at Dantewada on April 9.
NIA in its ‘summary of allegation’ stated that the union government has received information about the case being registered at Kuakonda police station in Dantewada regarding the death of Bheema Mandavi along with four police personnel.
The rebels took responsibility for the assassination of Mandavi calling the attack as “retaliatory’ to avenge the deaths of their senior cadres at the hands of security forces in Dantewada, the assembly segment represented by the slain BJP MLA.
The Bhupesh Baghel government has already ordered a judicial probe into the incident, BJP suspecting a conspiracy had earlier demanded a CBI probe into it.
Chhattisgarh is among those three states that bar the CBI from investigating cases in the state and had withdrawn the general consent granted to the premier investigating agency for probe.
Dantewada is among the seven worst Maoist-affected districts in the strife-torn Bastar zone, south Chhattisgarh.