Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has entrusted the Crime Branch with the investigation into the alleged disappearance of the judicial commission report on the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati from the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO).
Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi has directed the state Crime Branch to take over the investigation from the Capital police, escalating the probe into the missing records.
The development follows a complaint filed by the Home Department, based on which the Capital police had registered a case regarding the disappearance of two inquiry commission reports from the CMO and initiated an investigation.
According to the First Information Report (FIR), the missing documents include the Justice A.S. Naidu Commission report on the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati in Kandhamal district and the Revenue Divisional Commissioner’s inquiry report into the 2016 fire at SUM Hospital and Medical College in Bhubaneswar.
The Justice A.S. Naidu Commission submitted its findings on the Laxmanananda killing in 2016, while the RDC submitted the report on the SUM Hospital fire in 2018.
The FIR states that the Home Department had forwarded both inquiry reports, along with several other important files, to the CMO. While the CMO returned the remaining files to the Home Department on June 4, 2024, following the change of government after the Assembly elections, the two commission reports were allegedly not returned.
The Crime Branch is now expected to investigate the circumstances under which the reports went missing and determine responsibility for their disappearance.
