Circulation Staff Of Vernacular Daily ‘Murdered’ In Balangir

Balangir: Balangir Town Police on Tuesday detained three persons in connection with the murder of a circulation employee of a vernacular daily the previous night.

The three have been identified as Swadhin Meher, the prime accused, and his two associates, Tapan Nayak and Tofan Nag. .

According to police, Pratap Mahapatra, a native of Jagatsinghpur district, was working as a circulation manager of the Odia vernacular daily for the last four months.

As the office was closed on January 26 on the occasion of the Republic Day, Mahapatra had gone to Sambalpur on some personal work. From Sambalpur, he left for Sonepur. After arriving in Balangir from Sonepur in a bus at around 11.30 pm, Mahapatra was walking down to his office when he was intercepted by three miscreants near the Station Road at Mahalaxmi Nagar. As the miscreants tried to loot cash, there was a scuffle in which Swadhin stabbed Mahapatra with a knife, killing him on the spot. The three miscreants then fled the area.

Following information, a team of Town Police rushed to the spot and took the body to the district headquarters hospital, where the postmortem will be conducted on Tuesday.

Mahapatra, who had married last year, is survived by his wife and a 3-month-old son.

Police later examined the footage of the CCTV where the incident had taken place and launched a manhunt in  the town to nab the trio. Swadhin was apprehended from his house and on the basis of iinformation extracted from him,  his two associates were nabbed in the wee hours.

Meanwhile, Balangir SP K Sivasubramani arrived at the Town Police station on Tuesday for further interrogation of the three detained to elicit detailed information from them.

Expressing shock and resentment over the incident, senior journalists and think-tanks of Balangir town have blamed police inaction in controlling the crime. “The rate of crime in the town has gone manifold in the recent past due to rampant use of drugs and the drug peddlers are selling the narcotics in public places. There is no intensive night patrolling in the town. As a result, the drug addicts are committing such crime,” they rued.