The controversy over the disappearance of two key inquiry commission reports from the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) in Odisha took a dramatic turn on Thursday, with retired Orissa High Court judge Justice A S Naidu expressing concern over the fate of his commission’s report on the 2008 Kandhamal violence, even as police launched a criminal investigation into the alleged disappearance of the documents.

 

A day after the Odisha government lodged a first information report (FIR) alleging that two crucial inquiry reports had gone missing from government custody, Justice Naidu said the voluminous report prepared by his commission contained sensitive findings and should have been placed before the Cabinet and the Assembly.

 
 

“The full-fledged report spanned two thick volumes of over 1,500 pages. It contained sensitive findings and recommendations on how to prevent such incidents. There was one copy of the report. I suspect it has been misplaced,” Justice Naidu said, dismissing speculation that the report may have been stolen from the CMO.

 

The former judge headed the one-man commission appointed by the then Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government to investigate the circumstances leading to the murder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and the subsequent communal violence that engulfed Kandhamal district in 2008. The riots left at least 38 people dead, displaced thousands and caused extensive damage to property. The BJD snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) months after the incident and before the 2009 general elections.

 

The inquiry was initially entrusted to retired judge Justice Sarat Chandra Mohapatra. However, following his death in 2012 before the probe was completed, the state government appointed Justice Naidu to continue the investigation. The commission eventually submitted its report to the government in December 2015 after years of hearings and examination of evidence.

 

However, two years after the fall of the BJD government, the disappearance of two inquiry commission reports from the CMO has sparked a major political and legal controversy, with the BJP government ordering a criminal probe into allegations that the documents went missing during the transition of power in June 2024.

 

According to an FIR filed by the Home Department on Wednesday, two significant documents — the Justice A S Naidu Commission report on the 2008 Kandhamal communal violence following the murder of VHP leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, and the Revenue Divisional Commissioner (RDC) inquiry report into the 2016 SUM Hospital fire tragedy in Bhubaneswar — have gone missing from the CMO.

 

The complaint by Sarat Chandra Marandi, a joint secretary in the Home Department, states that the reports may have been intentionally removed, retained, concealed, destroyed or otherwise unlawfully dealt with.

 

“Several other reports and files which had been forwarded to the CMO in the normal course of official business were subsequently returned to the Home Department on June 4, 2024, when counting of votes for the Odisha Legislative Assembly election was conducted and the results indicated a change in the government. However, despite the return of other files and records, the two judicial commission reports did not return from the CMO and are presently untraceable,” the FIR stated.

 

Speaking about the findings, Justice Naidu said the report had identified multiple factors behind the violence and cautioned against attributing the unrest to a single cause.

 

“Religious conversion was a prominent reason behind the building tensions, but it was not the only cause. The report details several underlying factors, including socio-economic issues, geographical isolation of the Kandha tribal community and disputes relating to the issuance of Scheduled Caste certificates,” he said.

 

The former judge expressed disappointment that the report had apparently never reached the stage of public discussion.

 

“We thoroughly evaluated the alleged role of Maoists and their leader in orchestrating the attack. These findings were detailed in our final submission. Since it was a highly confidential and sensitive report, the conclusions were meant to be placed before the Cabinet,” he said.

 

He maintained that although he no longer remembered every detail after more than a decade, all relevant findings and names were documented in the report.

 

Acting on the complaint, Capital Police registered a case under relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) dealing with theft of official documents, criminal breach of trust by public servants and destruction of evidence. Inspector B B Hota questioned a few government officials in connection with the case on Thursday. He said accountability would be fixed and that the government would determine the next course of action.

 

The allegations triggered a political storm, with the ruling BJP accusing the previous government of failing to safeguard critical official records, while the opposition BJD rejected the charges and accused the government of attempting to divert public attention through politically motivated allegations.

 

The FIR follows allegations made by Odisha Law Minister Prithviraj Harichandan earlier this month. Harichandan had claimed that two crucial inquiry commission reports had gone missing from the CMO during the previous BJD regime and suggested that the documents were found to be missing when officials were preparing to place them before the Assembly.

 

Responding to the controversy, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi had also assured that the government would investigate the matter if a formal complaint was received.