Bhubaneswar: The Raigarh Sessions Judge Court, Chhattisgarh, on Saturday sentenced former BJD leader and Brajarajnagar MLA Anup Sai to life in the 2016 double murder of Kalpana Das and her 14-year-old daughter Babli.
In 2020, Chattisgarh police arrested Sai, who was formerly Congress MLA from Brajrajnagar and then joined BJD and became Chairman of Odisha Lift Irrigation Corporation, at the end of 18 hours of marathon interrogation at Chakradhar Nagar police station in Raigarh district after being picked up from a temple near his residence in western Odisha’s Jharsuguda town.
Notably, the bodies of Kalpana Das (32) and her daughter were recovered in a forest at Hamirpur in Chhattisgarh. It was then suspected that the mother-daughter duo was killed somewhere in Jharsuguda district and their mauled bodies were later dumped across the border later to pass it off as a case of a road accident.
Sai reportedly conspired to eliminate Kalpana with whom he was in a relationship since 2011 when she insisted on marriage and demanded a share in his property.
On the pretext of marriage at Raigarh, the former MLA sent both the mother and daughter to Jharsuguda on May 5, 2016, on a bus. He followed them in his own car along with his driver Barman Toppo. From Jharsuguda, the four left for Raigarh in the same vehicle. On reaching Raigarh, he told them that there are no good hotels around and they would stay in a relative’s house at Hamirpur.
However, Kalpana and her daughter were fatally assaulted near Sakambari plant. To destroy the identity of the two deceased, he along with his driver drove over bodies several times. They then fled to Odisha via Hamirpur, the Raigarh SP had then said.
After almost a year, a constable of Odisha Police, who was a relative of the deceased, identified the bodies.
The needle of suspicion turned towards Sai after police raced the call records of Kalpana. However, it took police another three years to arrest him after over 700 people from Odisha, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were interrogated.
The post-mortem report of the deceased revealed that they were first hit with a blunt object before being run over by a vehicle.
