Kandhamal riots probe amongst two stories ‘lacking’, ex-CMO officers summoned in Odisha | India Information
3 min learnBhubaneswarJul 16, 2026 10:02 PM IST
The Odisha Police have summoned two former senior bureaucrats who served within the chief minister’s workplace (CMO) beneath the earlier Biju Janata Dal authorities as a part of an investigation into the alleged disappearance of two inquiry fee stories.
Summons have been issued to retired IAS officer Rajesh Verma and former Indian Railway Site visitors Service (IRTS) officer Manoj Mishra as a part of the investigation into the alleged disappearance of two stories — one pertaining to the killing of Hindu seer Laxmananda Saraswati in Kandhamal in 2008, and the opposite on the hearth at SUM medical faculty in 2016.
The 2 retired bureaucrats have been requested to look on July 22. They didn’t reply to calls and texts for a remark.
“You’re requested to deliver with you any paperwork, information, digital gadgets or another materials related to the investigation that could be in your possession or management,” the discover issued to Verma Wednesday mentioned.
Verma served as principal secretary to former chief minister Naveen Patnaik between 2017 and 2019 and served as secretary to President Droupadi Murmu after becoming a member of the central deputation in 2022. Mishra served as secretary of the Electronics and IT Division and as officer on particular obligation (OSD) within the CMO throughout the BJD rule.
Mishra resigned after the change of presidency in June 2024.
Police sources mentioned that because the two retired officers seem like acquainted “with the details and circumstances of the case”, they had been requested to look for examination and lengthen cooperation.
This comes after a police grievance from the joint secretary of the house division on June 10 alleged that the 2 judicial fee stories aren’t accessible within the CMO and stay untraceable regardless of searches.
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The complainant alleged that whereas a number of different stories and information forwarded by the house division to the CMO had been returned on June 4, 2024 — when the Meeting election outcomes grew to become clear — these two are nonetheless lacking.
The FIR claimed that the “disappearance” of the stories created an affordable suspicion that they might have been “deliberately eliminated, retained, hid, destroyed or in any other case unlawfully handled”.
The Kandhamal report probed the killing of Hindu seer and Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) chief Laxmananda Saraswati and his 4 disciples, which led to communal clashes that killed 39 individuals. The clashes strained the BJD-BJP alliance, with the 2 events severing ties forward of the 2009 Meeting and common elections.
In October 2013, a classes court docket in Kandhamal sentenced eight individuals, together with Maoist chief P Rama Rao alias Uday, to life imprisonment.
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Talking to The Indian Specific lately, Justice (retd) A S Naidu, who headed the one-member fee, mentioned the two-volume report, operating over 1,500 pages, was submitted to the Odisha authorities in December 2016. The fee examined round 300 witnesses and obtained 825 affidavits throughout the course of its inquiry.
The previous decide additionally mentioned that the report referred to spiritual conversions amongst tribal and Scheduled Caste communities as one of many components behind social tensions in Kandhamal, and likewise handled Maoist actions, social stigma, socio-economic points, and the geographical isolation of tribal communities.
Equally, the inquiry report by the income divisional commissioner (RDC) into the SUM hospital hearth, by which 22 individuals had been killed in October 2016, was despatched to the CMO in Could 2018. The incident led the then well being minister, Atanu Sabyasachi Nayak, to resign.
