As pressure on Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik grew over the alleged fake encounter in which five innocent people were killed, a four-member team of the ruling BJD visited Gumudumaha village in Kandhamal district on Tuesday.
The team comprising three Ministers – Snehangini Chhuria, Ramesh Chandra Majhi and Sudam Marandi – and former BJD Rajya Sabha Member Bhupinder Singh met the family members of those who were killed and injured persons at Gumudumaha.
The BJD leaders visited the spot a day after Mr. Patnaik termed the killing most unfortunate and directed the Director General of Police to have a detailed review and apply required correctives so that such incident is not repeated in future anti-Maoist operations.
Mr. Patnaik, however, did not visit Gumudumaha himself even though four days had passed, thereby inviting serious criticism from the Opposition Congress and BJP. Mr. Patnaik had also faced similar criticism when he did not visit Kalinga Nagar in Jajpur district where 13 tribal people were killed in police firing in January 2006.
Senior Congress leaders were first to visit Gumudumaha on Sunday and meet the families of the victims. The killings occurred on Friday night.
A delegation of the BJP leaders headed by State president Basanta Panda also visited Gumudumaha on Wednesday and interacted with the victims’ families.
Rameshwar Oraon, Chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) who has reached Bhubaneswar, is scheduled to visit Gumudumaha on Wednesday.
In another development, BJP national president Amit Shah also constituted a committee of three MPs to visit Kandhamal to look into the killings and submit a report.
Leader of Opposition in Odisha Assembly and senior Congress leader Narasingha Mishra has also announced that he will visit Gumudumaha along with other legislators of the party on July 15. Opposition Congress and BJP as well as many human rights organisations have rejected the SIT probe ordered by the Chief Minister and demanded formation of SIT under the Orissa the High Court for an impartial investigation into the incident.
A case had been initially registered at Baliguda pin Kandhamal on the basis of a complaint filed by the Special Operation Group of the Odisha Police stating that the villagers were killed when the auto-rickshaw they were travelling in was caught in an exchange of fire between security personnel and Maoists. The villagers who were injured in the firing, however, had strongly countered the SOG stand saying that the police killed others in cold blood.
Meanwhile, Director of Intelligence Department of Odisha police Sunil Roy visited the area following an order by the Chief Minister that a Special Investigation Team of the Human Rights Protection Cell of the State police will investigate into the incident.
