Nand Kumar Patel

Nand Kumar Patel (8 November 1953 – 25 May 2013) was an Indian National Congress politician from the province of Chhattisgarh. He was elected to the Kharsia Assembly Constituency five times in a row (1990, 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008).

He was a cabinet minister in the state governments of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He was kidnapped and killed by Naxalites during the 2013 Naxal attack in Darbha valley.

On 25 May 2013, news broke that several Congress leaders were killed in a Naxalite attack on a Congress convoy. At first, Naxalites claimed to have kidnapped Nand Kumar Patel and his son Dinesh keeping up the hopes of their coming back alive. However, their bullet-ridden bodies were found in the Jiram valley in the Bastar district the next day.

On 27 May, the Naxalites claimed responsibility for the attack by issuing a statement which called it a punishment for atrocities committed by the Salwa Judum, the counter-Naxalite paramilitary forces in the Bastar area, and claimed the attack was targeted at its leader, Mahendra Karma.

The newly elected Chhattisgarh government has set up an SIT under Vivekanand Sinha to probe into the incident on 2 January 2019.

Shaheed Nandkumar Patel Vishwavidyalaya is an Indian state university in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh. It was established by the Gazette notification on 22 January 2020 of the Chhattisgarh Act, The Chhattisgarh Vishwavidyalaya Act, 2019, and opened in January 2020. Under this Indian State University, there are total of 29 government colleges and 80 private colleges established and has been working full-fledged.