Bhubaneswar: A Crime Branch team arrived at Capital policesStation in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday to take over and intensify the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Justice AS Naidu Commission report on the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati at the Jalespeta Ashram in Kandhamal district in August 2008.
This comes a day after Chief Minister Mohan Majhi referred the missing file case to Crime Branch.
In an official statement issued, the CID Crime Branch said it has re-registered the case under Sections 305, 316(2), 238(c), 241 and 61(2)(b) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, following the orders of the Director General of Police. The decision was taken “in view of the larger public interest and to ensure an impartial and thorough investigation” into the case originally registered at Capital Police Station in Bhubaneswar, it added.
DCP Asutosh Mishra has been tasked with leading the investigation, under the direct supervision and oversight of SP Anirudha Routray. The Crime Branch is expected to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the missing of the Justice AS Naidu report and fix accountability.
Earlier on June 10, the Home department had filed an FIR in connection with the alleged disappearance of the reports of two inquiry commissions from the chief minister’s office (CMO) at the Capital police station here. “The two reports are presently untraceable at the CMO. While other files were returned on June 4, 2024, following the change in government, the two inquiry reports – the Justice A S Naidu Commission report on the 2008 assassination of VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati (which reached the CMO in September 2016) and the Revenue Divisional Commissioner’s inquiry into the 2016 fire tragedy at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar (forwarded to the CMO in May 2018) – were not. The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of these two reports create a reasonable suspicion that the reports may have been intentionally removed, retained, concealed, destroyed or otherwise unlawfully dealt with,” the FIR stated.
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Capital Police had previously issued notices to several senior officials, who served during the previous BJD regime, to assist in the investigation. While former IT secretary Manoj Mishra appeared before the investigating officers, former private secretary to the Chief Minister V K Pandian, former additional chief secretary U N Behera and principal secretary Rajesh Verma, however, skipped the summons.
