Bhubaneswar: While the kidnap and murder of Manas Swain is being attributed to a memory chip, which could have landed the prime accused and his former employer Sarmistha Rout in trouble, the Crime Branch has now revealed that the cameraman was tortured after he reportedly failed to recover a file from her computer.
After being kidnapped from Palashpur village in Bhadrak district on February 7, when he had gone to record videos of a wedding, he was brought to Sampoorna’s office, which Sarmistha owns at Sundarpada, and was asked to recover a deleted file from her computer. When Manas along with another accused in the case, Ranjan Nayak, failed to retrieve the file, he was asked to hand over a memory chip having the same content which was deleted from Sarmistha’s computer, the CB sources said.
Retired Odisha Information Service (OIS) officer Niranjan Sethi, who is believed to be the co-conspirator, has confessed to having visited Sarmistha’s office on February 7 and assaulted Manas.
Manas was then taken to Dayal Ashram, an old age home run by Sarmistha, and was brutally thrashed. He was found dead by his tormentors the following morning.
The CB is yet to trace the memory chip.
Notably, Chandbali JMFC court on Sunday allowed the agency to take Sarmistha and her associate Jhuna Bhoi on remand for three more days for further questioning them in connection with the case.
The CB had earlier taken Sarmistha, Jhuna, Niranjan and Ranjan on five-day remand on March 29 and Niranjan and Ranjan were sent to judicial custody after the end of the remand on Sunday.
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