The Odisha government on Wednesday filed a case over the disappearance of investigation reports into the state’s worst communal violence and the killing of 24 patients in a fire at SUM Hospital in Bhubaneswar from the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) during the last days of the Naveen Patnaik government in 2024.
The case relating to the investigation reports of Justice AS Naidu and Commissioner of Revenue (Central) or RCD (Central) division has been registered under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections relating to criminal breach of trust, concealment and destruction of documents and criminal conspiracy against persons unknown.
Justice Naidu heard the killing of Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Swami Laxmananda Saraswati and four of his followers by Maoists in August 2008 in Kandhamal, which sparked Hindu Christian riots and left 38 people dead. Seven people were convicted for their role in the riots. The RDC (Central) investigated the fire that broke out in the intensive care unit, dialysis and emergency units of SUM Hospital in October 2016.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s VHP and Bajrang Dal have been demanding the release of the Naidu committee report since it was submitted in December 2015.
“…The two reports were not returned from the CMO on June 4, 2024, and cannot be traced at the moment. “The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of these two reports, particularly on the return of other files sent during the same period, create reasonable suspicion that the reports may have been intentionally deleted, retained, concealed, destroyed or unlawfully dealt with,” Home Ministry Joint Secretary Sarath Chandra Marandi said in the first information report filed in the case.
