Four days after VHP leader’s murder, police still clueless

Bhubaneswar, August 27: Battling communal violence of unprecedented proportions after VHP leader Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati and four others were killed in Kandhamal district last Saturday, Orissa police are yet to start a thorough inquiry that will lead them to the 30-odd assailants.

In the last four days, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has announced the setting up of a judicial inquiry commission to unravel the truth and sent two police IGs and two DIGs to Kandhamal. On Tuesday, he sent an investigation team, headed by Crime Branch SP Yatindra Koyal, to Kandhamal to hunt down the killers.

On Saturday night when Lakshmanananda Saraswati was killed, Orissa Director General of Police Gopal Chandra Nanda didn’t wait for a full inquiry before making a statement that Maoists were behind the incident. “From the automatic weapons used it looks like the handiwork of Maoists,” he said. But four days after the incident, the state Government has nothing to prove this claim though two persons were detained on the suspicion that they could have had a role in the killing.

On Wednesday, Inspector General of Police (Intelligence) Manmohan Praharaj sought to play down the Maoist angle and said the police were keeping all the options open. “Whatever evidence we have got is consistent with the Maoist stamp in the kind of operation they undertake. The assailants had left a note written on the letterhead of Vamsadhara Zonal Committee, signed by one Azad, and it is consistent with the Maoist methods,” said Praharaj.

While the Chief Minister claimed that intensive raids and intelligence-based combing operations were being undertaken to apprehend the culprits, police admitted that the probe was heading nowhere. “We have interrogated people but had to let them go after finding little evidence,” said Praharaj.

The Maoist theory has been junked by Sangh Parivar outfits, who accuse the local Christians to be the killers. “Someone had decided at some point of time that Lakshmanananda Saraswati had to be killed,” said a VHP leader.

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