Supreme Court Stays Conviction of Amit Jogi in 2003 NCP Leader Murder Case

Apil 24, 2026 : In a significant development, the Supreme Court has stayed the Chhattisgarh High Court’s judgment convicting Amit Jogi and sentencing him to life imprisonment in the 2003 murder case of Ramavatar Jaggi.

Jaggi, a leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), was shot dead in Raipur on June 4, 2003, during the tenure of then Chief Minister Ajit Jogi.

The Chhattisgarh High Court, in its April 2 ruling, had convicted Jogi and directed him to surrender within three weeks to serve a life sentence. This was a reversal of the trial court’s May 31, 2007 verdict, which had acquitted him while convicting 28 other accused.

A bench comprising Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, and Vijay Bishnoi granted interim relief after hearing senior advocates Vivek Tankha and Kapil Sibal, who appeared for Jogi. The victim’s side, represented by Siddharth Luthra and Gopal Sankaranarayanan, opposed the plea.

While staying the conviction and sentence, the Court also issued notice to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which had earlier taken over the case from the state police and filed a chargesheet naming Jogi among the accused.

The High Court had revisited the matter following directions from the Supreme Court on a CBI appeal. In November last year, the apex court had acknowledged the delay in the CBI’s application but observed that the allegations against Jogi were serious, involving a conspiracy to murder a political rival. Jaggi was known to be a close associate of former state NCP chief Vidya Charan Shukla.