The Supreme Court of India on Monday agreed to hear the Special Leave Petition filed by former Janata Congress MLA Amit Jogi on 20th April, 2026 challenging his conviction and life sentence in the 2003 murder of NCP leader Ramavatar Jaggi, with the defence led by senior advocates Kapil Sibal, Mukul Rohatgi, Vivek Tankha and Siddharth Dave.
In his petition before the apex court, Jogi, whose father late Ajit Jogi was the first CM of Chhattisgarh , has argued that he was not given a fair opportunity to defend himself, claiming he was provided around 11,000 pages of case documents shortly before the hearing and given limited time to respond.
The development follows the 3rd April judgment of the Chhattisgarh High Court, which overturned Jogi’s 2007 acquittal and convicted him in the 23-year-old case, directing him to surrender within three weeks.
In its ruling, the High Court placed decisive reliance on the fact that a special CBI court had already convicted 28 co-accused in the same case on the basis of a criminal conspiracy behind Jaggi’s killing. It noted that this finding had subsequently been upheld, thereby establishing the conspiracy as a matter of judicial record.
The court held that the trial court’s decision to acquit Jogi while convicting 28 others on the same evidentiary chain was legally unsustainable. It observed that once the prosecution’s case of conspiracy had been accepted and resulted in convictions of the co-accused, a different conclusion in respect of Jogi on identical material created a contradiction that could not be sustained in law.
Acting on a prior direction of the Supreme Court to reconsider the matter on merits, the High Court re-appreciated the evidence and concluded that Jogi’s acquittal, earlier granted on benefit of doubt, did not hold in light of the established conspiracy and consistent findings against the other accused. It accordingly set aside the acquittal and convicted him under the conspiracy framework linked to the murder.
The case traces back to the killing of Ramavatar Jaggi in Raipur in June 2003, at a time when Chhattisgarh was under a Congress government led by then Chief Minister Ajit Jogi. Of the 31 accused, 28 were convicted by the trial court in 2007, two turned approvers, and Jogi alone was acquitted at the time, a position that has now been reversed by the High Court.
Before the Supreme Court, the defence is expected to challenge the High Court judgment on grounds including the legal threshold for reversing an acquittal and the evidentiary standard required in conspiracy cases.
With the matter now listed for 20th April, the Supreme Court will examine whether the High Court’s reliance on parity with the 28 convicted co-accused and its re-evaluation of evidence meets settled principles governing criminal appeals against acquittal.
