In a major setback to the State Government, the Chhattisgarh High Court, Bilaspur on Wednesday ordered it to hand over all files related to investigation into the killing of BJP MLA Bhima Mandavi to National Investigation Agency (NIA).
The State Government was reluctant to handover the case documents to the NIA citing that a probe had been undertaken by a judicial commission.
It had also urged the Union Government to take back its decision for a NIA probe into the killing as the commission was already constituted by the State Government to probe into the matter.
Earlier, the BJP leaders of the state, rejecting the probe by the state agency, demanded a probe from CBI but as the entry of CBI is ban in the state through a state government’s order, the Union government ordered for a NIA probe.
Meanwhile, the High Court ordered the state government to handover all probe related files to NIA within 15 days.
Notably, Mandavi, the BJP MLA from Dantewada, along with four others were killed while he was on a campaign trail in Dantewada district on April 9, 2019. His convoy was blown up by Maoists at Shyamgiri.