Bhubaneswar: Health Minister Naba Kishore Das is the first state minister and second MLA from Odisha to have been assassinated. He died hours after being shot by assistant sub-inspect of police Gopal Das, battling a bullet which pierced his heart and lung.
The ruling BJD, however, has witnessed two more firing incidents involving its leaders in the past. A youth leader of the party was also hacked to death. A Congress leader and a former MP of JMM were also attacked in the state.
ATTACK ON FIVE PROMINENT LEADERS
Two miscreants fired at the then tourism and culture minister Maheshwar Mohanty when he was driving a scooter back home from a function, in a narrow lane near Amala Club in the heart of Puri town on February 22, 2014. He sustained bullet injuries on his left arm and back. He was rushed to a hospital in Puri and subsequently shifted to Bhubaneswar, where he was operated upon and the bullet lodged in his ribs removed. The attack was attributed to a dispute over real estate.
Three unidentified men gunned down a wheelchair-bound BJD MLA Jagabandhu Majhi and his personal security officer (PSO) at Raighar block in Nabarangpur district in September 2011. The legislator and the PSO received two bullets each. The MLA’s driver rushed Majhi to Raighar hospital, 18 km from Gona, where he was declared dead. Involvement of Maoists was suspected in the attack.
Minister for Commerce and Transport Tukuni Sahu’s husband Abhimanyu Sahu was hacked to death by some miscreants when he was out on a morning walk on December 15, 2013. He was found in a pool of blood with his throat slit. Locals rushed him to sub-divisional hospital in Titlagarh, where doctors declared him brought dead.
On February 26, 2007, Congress MLA from Champua in Keonjhar Dhanurjay Sidhu also faced an assassination attempt. Unidentified bike-borne miscreants waylaid him and opened fire when he was going to an event in his own vehicle. The criminals fired around 14 rounds before fleeing. He was rushed to the government hospital at Barbil and later shifted to Tisco hospital at Joda where surgeons removed two of the three bullets from the lower abdomen after a four-hour-long operation. He was then shifted to SCB Medical College in Cuttack.
Sudam Marandi, a former MP and senior leader of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, survived what seems to be an assassination attempt by Maoists in 2009. Three security men accompanying Sudam were killed when he was attacked while going towards his vehicle after attending a football match near Bandam village, some 35 km from the district headquarters of Baripada.
