New Delhi, September 7, 2026

Bhaavna Arora

Thirteen years is an exceedingly long time to wait for justice.

On May 25, 2013, more than 150 Maoists ambushed a Congress convoy at Jhiram Ghati in Bastar. Twenty-seven people were killed, including senior Congress leaders Mahendra Karma, Nand Kumar Patel, his son Dinesh, and Uday Mudliyar, along with security personnel.

Now, after more than a decade, hundreds of hearings and the examination of scores of witnesses, a special NIA court in Jagdalpur has convicted ten people. The quantum of punishment is due to be announced on September 16.

For the families who lost their loved ones, this verdict matters. No policy of reconciliation should diminish their grief or pretend that Jhiram was simply another incident in a long insurgency. It was a massacre. And yet, the verdict has also brought us face to face with a much more difficult question.

What happens when people accused of taking part in the Maoist movement surrender years later?

Among those chargesheeted in the Jhiram case were senior Maoist leaders who subsequently surrendered. Their surrender forces us to confront an uncomfortable reality: a surrender and rehabilitation policy cannot succeed if laying down the gun changes nothing.

This is where the debate becomes complicated.

There will undoubtedly be ideological supporters of the Maoist movement who will celebrate every withdrawal of a case against a surrendered cadre as some kind of vindication. The dimagi Naxals, as I call those who romanticise the revolution from a safe distance, may even portray it as proof that the State was wrong all along.

It proves nothing of the sort.

A government considering the withdrawal of eligible cases as part of a declared surrender and rehabilitation policy is not conceding the Maoist argument. It is exercising the authority of the State to bring an insurgency to an end.

There is an important distinction here.

Forgiveness offered as policy is not the same as innocence established by history.

The Chhattisgarh government’s surrender and rehabilitation policy was created to provide a pathway out of armed rebellion. It offers surrendered cadres financial aid, education, employment opportunities, rehabilitation support and a mechanism through which eligible pending cases can be reviewed.

And this matters enormously.

I have spent considerable time in the conflict zones speaking to surrendered Maoists, security personnel and people who have lived through this insurgency. One thing becomes obvious very quickly. Surrender does not happen merely because somebody walks into a police station and puts a weapon on a table.

It happens because somewhere along the way, trust has been created.

If the State tells a Maoist hiding in the forest, give up your weapon, leave violence behind and we will help you return to society, then the credibility of that promise becomes part of the counter insurgency itself.

The next person contemplating surrender is watching what happens to the person who surrendered before him.

If every promise disappears the moment the weapon is deposited, why would the next commander come out?

This is why I see no inherent malice in the government’s decision to consider withdrawal of eligible cases against surrendered cadres. There must, of course, be legal scrutiny. There must be safeguards. Cases involving grave crimes require particular care. And the victims of Maoist violence can never become footnotes in somebody else’s rehabilitation story.

But where the State has explicitly promised concessions as part of surrender, the State must keep its word.

That principle is bigger than any individual Maoist.

India’s approach to Left Wing Extremism has increasingly combined enormous security pressure with an exit route for those willing to abandon violence. Surrender policies, rehabilitation packages, housing, education, skill development and livelihood opportunities have worked alongside security operations.

That combination is important.

The gun must carry consequences. Laying down the gun must carry possibilities.

Otherwise, there is little incentive to choose the second over the first.

At the same time, the questions raised over the Jhiram investigation cannot simply be brushed aside because they are politically inconvenient. Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has described the verdict as “incomplete justice” and questioned whether the wider conspiracy behind the attack was adequately investigated.

Those questions deserve answers through evidence and due process.

Reconciliation cannot mean rewriting history.

Twenty-seven people died at Jhiram Ghati. Families were destroyed. Chhattisgarh’s political landscape was changed in a matter of minutes. Those responsible for planning and executing such attacks cannot retrospectively be transformed into harmless revolutionaries merely because the insurgency is now weakening.

But neither can India fight yesterday’s war forever.

There comes a point in every successful counter insurgency when the State must decide what victory actually looks like.

Is victory the last insurgent lying dead in a forest?

Or is victory the last insurgent walking out of that forest, surrendering his weapon and deciding never to pick it up again?

Perhaps lasting victory lies somewhere between justice and reconciliation.

The Jhiram verdict reminds us that the dead deserve justice.

The surrender policy reminds us that the living need a way out.

Holding these two truths together is difficult. Yet that is precisely what a mature and confident State must be capable of doing.

Punish where justice demands punishment. Investigate where questions remain. Rehabilitate where rehabilitation has been promised. And above all, when the Government gives its word to those willing to abandon the gun, it must keep that word.

Because in an insurgency, trust is not merely sentiment.

Trust is strategy

(Bhaavna Arora is a bestselling author known for transforming years of meticulous research into powerful human stories. Her work explores conflict not through battles alone, but through the lives, sacrifices, and resilience of those who endure it.)