The convoy was returning from a Parivartan Yatra, a "Change Rally" organized by the Indian National Congress across Chhattisgarh. Around 200 party leaders and workers filled 25 vehicles traveling from Sukma toward Jagdalpur along National Highway 221, a road that threads through some of India's densest forest and most contested territory. Nearly every senior state Congress figure was present: former Union Minister Vidya Charan Shukla, former state minister Mahendra Karma, state Congress chief Nand Kumar Patel, and prominent tribal leader Phulo Devi Netam from Bastar. The Naxalites had been planning their strike for weeks, enraged by what they saw as a provocation: the mobilization of thousands of security personnel in the region. Their central commission authorized the attack on the rally.

The insurgents struck in the narrow passage of Jhiram Ghati, where steep valley walls and dense forest eliminated any chance of escape. Crossfire erupted between Mahendra Karma's guards and the Maoists, but when his defenders ran out of ammunition, Karma stepped forward and identified himself. The Naxalites took him away, beat him, stabbed him repeatedly, and shot him. An autopsy would later reveal 78 stab wounds on his body. Nand Kumar Patel and his son Dinesh were abducted after the initial attack. Around 6 pm, the Maoists released their other captives but kept the Patels. Their bodies were recovered from the forest the following day; Dinesh had been killed by an axe blow to the head, his father stabbed and shot multiple times. In all, twelve Congress leaders and workers, eight police and CRPF personnel, and four villagers died in the attack.

Darbha police station stood only 10 kilometers away, and a major CRPF camp was nearby. Neither could reach the survivors quickly. The Maoists had felled trees across the roads, and security forces had to advance on foot, checking every meter for land mines, a tactic the insurgents routinely used to trap rescue teams. It took several hours for reinforcements to arrive at the ambush site. Some survivors walked 12 kilometers to the town of Darbha to summon help, then organized transport to ferry the injured to hospitals in Darbha and Jagdalpur. Vidya Charan Shukla, critically wounded, was transferred first to Raipur and then airlifted to Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon. He survived for seventeen days before succumbing to his injuries on June 11, 2013.

The scale of the attack triggered a national reckoning. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi, and Rahul Gandhi traveled to the hospital in Jagdalpur to meet the injured. The Centre dispatched more than 600 CRPF personnel, including CoBRA anti-Maoist commandos, and sent 2,000 additional paramilitary forces to Chhattisgarh in the weeks that followed. Chief Minister Raman Singh received Z+ security protection with National Security Guard commandos. The Indian Air Force began upgrading surveillance capacity in Maoist-affected areas after unmanned aerial vehicles operating in the region proved ineffective. On September 14, 2013, security forces tracked 14 suspected perpetrators to the Salaikota reserve forest in South Odisha, 35 kilometers from Malkangiri, and killed them in an encounter.

The Darbha Valley sits in the heart of what the Indian government calls the "Red Corridor," a belt of heavily forested, economically marginalized districts stretching across central and eastern India where Maoist insurgents have waged an armed struggle since the late 1960s. The people caught between these forces, tribal communities in Bastar and Sukma, have paid the steepest price. Mahendra Karma, himself a tribal leader from Bastar, had founded the controversial Salwa Judum anti-Maoist militia, making him the insurgents' primary target for years. His death, along with those of the police officers, party workers, and bystanders who died beside him in Jhiram Ghati, illuminated a conflict where political ambition, ideological warfare, and the lives of ordinary people collide in the forests of central India.