Unidentified miscreants set a sports utility vehicle (SUV) of an Odisha MLA on fire after locking him inside his camp office in Angul district late on Saturday.
The incident took place when Talcher MLA Braja Kishore Pradhan came to his camp office at Nandira village around 11.30 p.m. on Saturday.
Two hours later when Mr. Pradhan and his driver had fallen asleep, miscreants entered the garage and torched his Toyota Fortuner model SUV. Woken up by some noise, the MLA tried to go out and found the door locked from outside.
Mr. Pradhan called his driver on the cellphone. Finding two vehicles – the SUV and an ambulance – burning, they tried to douse the fire but in vain.
It was not yet ascertained as to who torched the vehicle. Vikrampur police along with a forensic team and a dog squad conducted a scrutiny of the spot.
In a similar manner in August, unidentified miscreants set ablaze his SUV and a bike at his official quarters in Bhubaneswar. Mr. Pradhan was then not present in his residence. His support staff, who felt suffocated after the entire house was filled with smoke, escaped through the glass window of the washroom.
In 2017, a woman, who claimed to be the MLA’s wife, had ransacked his Bhubaneswar official quarters.
