Statement against the Death Sentence for the Jiramghati 10 Political Prisoners in India

diffused by ICSPWI

The “International Coordination in Solidarity with Political Prisoners” expresses our deep concerns about
and condemns the death sentence awarded to 10 indigenous (Adivasi) political prisoners in India on 16th
September 2026. These 10 Adivasi political prisoners (the Jiramghati 10), who have been accused of
being part of the Peoples’ Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) of the Communist Party of India (Maoist),
were convicted in the 2013 Jhiram Ghati (Jhiram Valley) attack case by a special NIA court in the city of
Jagdalpur, Chattisgarh state, central India. In the Jhiram Ghati incident in 2013, a convoy of the then
ruling Congress Party which was passing through the Jhiram valley was ambushed by the PLGA, resulting
in the death of 29 Congress leaders and workers. Among the killed was Mahendra Karma, the founder
and leader of the notorious Salwa Judum, a paramilitary vigilante force formed by recruiting some
sections of Adivasi peoples with the active backing of the government and local mining corporations,
which was involved in widespread attacks, torture, sexual harassment, burning, looting and
displacement of Adivasi communities into “strategic hamlets” in the name of combating the CPI(Maoist).
The 10 Adivasi political prisoners who have been sentenced to death were picked up from nearby
villages after the ambush and were accused of being active members of the PLGA and of being involved
in the attack. The 10 persons sentenced to death have consistently maintained their innocence, and
their families have always declared that they were arbitrarily arrested and falsely implicated in the
Jhiram Ghati incident. They have spent the last 13 years in prison while the trial process has gone on.
Now after, suffering 13 years of imprisonment, they have been sentenced to death. One of the accused
persons even died while the trial proceedings were going on after spending many years in prison.
While the death sentence being awarded at the same time to 10 political prisoners is very uncommon
even under known authoritarian governments, it clearly illustrates the biased, unjust and authoritarian
situation of the “justice” system in so called “democratic” India. Under this justice system, people from
poor and disadvantaged backgrounds, such as the Jiramghati 10, have little chance of effective legal
defence and judicial recourse when they are implicated in political cases. This is the case with thousands
of political prisoners from Adivasi, Dalit and minority (Muslim) backgrounds who are suffering many
years of imprisonment in the jails of India today. The fascist government of Narendra Modi has
weaponized the judicial system itself against all resisting people, such that the judicial process itself has
become the punishment. And at the end of these long and tortuous judicial processes, we now see the
death sentence being applied at a mass scale in this Jiram Ghati case, clearly demonstrating the
miscarriage of justice.
We therefore consider this death sentence as a grave case of misapplication of justice by a biased
judicial system. We understand that many Adivasi peoples in the conflict region of Bastar in central India
had taken up arms and joined the insurgency in a struggle of resistance against the state-corporate
onslaught that has tried to deprive them of their lands, lives and livelihoods over the last two decades.
However, just being part of a popular insurgency cannot be the reason for being sentenced to death in a
criminal case without an unbiased trial and due process of law. This is the result of a “judicial
encounter”, similar to the military encounters in which more than 500 Adivasi peoples have been killed
this year by Indian security forces under the “Operation Kagar” without any trial or legal process. It is
also a fact that not a single person has been tried or convicted for the many well documented cases of
killings, tortures, sexual attacks and other human rights violations by the Salwa Judum militia or security
forces over the last fifteen years, even though the Salwa Judum was itself outlawed by the supreme
court of India in 2011.
We consider that the death sentence for the Jiram Ghati 10 is purely the action of a revengeful state
which wants to set a lesson for the Adivasi peoples of Bastar and all struggling people in general who are
resisting the fascistic Modi government’s attacks on the people of India. We therefore demand the
revocation of the death sentence and immediate release of the Jiram Ghati 10 and call upon all
international organizations in solidarity to join our call for the same.