The Judicial Commission probing last year’s communal riots in Orissa’s Kandhamal district is understood to have attributed the prolonged violence to “cumulative anger” of locals, mostly tribals, against the negligence they have suffered for years but was silent on the alleged role of the Sangh Parivar in the attacks.

“Cumulative anger of locals, mostly tribals, who felt neglected for years, fuelled the prolonged violence in Kandhamal,” the PTI quoted an official source as saying after the panel headed by Justice S C Mohapatra submitted its interim report to the Home Department. The report made no mention of the alleged role of Sangh Parivar outfits in the violence that followed the killing of VHP leader Laxmanananda Saraswati on August 23 last year.

“I submitted the interim report on Wednesday and it will take about two more years to complete the investigation after a detailed study,” said Justice Mohapatra, who submitted the 28-page report about nine months after the probe panel was constituted.

The report also blamed land disputes and conflict between tribals and Scheduled Caste ‘panas’ for the violence, the sources said. As many as 43 people were killed and thousands of houses and prayer halls damaged in the violence.

Meanwhile, in the first conviction in the riots cases, a fast-track court in Phulbani sentenced a tribal leader, Chakradhara Kanhar Mallick, 58, to two years’ in jail for setting ablaze the house of a Dalit Christian, Loknath Digal. Assistant Public Prosecutor Ajit Patnaik said Mallick, involved in several riot cases, instigated a mob to burn the house.

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