Odisha Police have registered a criminal case and formed a Special Investigation Team to probe the disappearance of two judicial commission reports from the state’s Chief Minister’s Office, including a crucial inquiry into the 2008 anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal district that left around 100 Christians dead.
Sarat Chandra Marandi, Joint Secretary in the State Home Department, filed the complaint at the Capital Police Station in Bhubaneswar on June 10. The two missing reports are the Justice A.S. Naidu Commission report on the killing of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and the subsequent violence against Christians in Kandhamal, and a Revenue Divisional Commissioner inquiry report into a 2016 fire at SUM Hospital and Medical College in Bhubaneswar in which 22 people died.
The Kandhamal report has long been sought by church leaders and human rights activists. When Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati was killed on August 23, 2008, Hindu extremist groups blamed Christians, though Maoist rebels later claimed responsibility for the assassination. What followed was one-sided. Christians did not retaliate. The violence continued for nearly seven weeks and is widely described as the worst episode of anti-Christian persecution in independent India’s history. Around 100 Christians were killed, hundreds of churches destroyed, over 5,600 houses burnt or looted, and more than 56,000 people displaced, according to church and human rights organisations. Thousands were forced under threat to undergo reconversion ceremonies. The Justice Naidu Commission was set up to examine the causes of the violence and administrative failures. Its report, submitted in December 2015, was never made public.
According to the complaint, the Naidu Commission report was transmitted to the CMO on September 19, 2016. The SUM Hospital fire inquiry followed on May 24, 2018. Both were sent through proper official channels. When the Home Department recently sought the reports, they were nowhere to be found.
Marandi pointed to a specific date: June 4, 2024, when election results confirmed a change of government in Odisha. Other files sent by the Home Department to the CMO were returned that day. The two commission reports were not. “The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of these two reports, particularly when other files forwarded during the same period were returned, create a reasonable suspicion that the reports may have been intentionally removed, retained, concealed, destroyed or otherwise unlawfully dealt with,” the complaint stated.
Police registered the case under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita relating to theft of official documents, criminal breach of trust by public servants and destruction of evidence. An SIT headed by the Twin City Police Commissioner, including a Superintendent of Police and two inspectors, has been constituted. The team has questioned Marandi, collected preliminary information, and begun scanning CCTV footage and electronic records.
The controversy erupted after Law Minister Prithiviraj Harichandan alleged the reports went missing during the previous BJD government under Naveen Patnaik. Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi assured a probe. The BJD questioned why the BJP government, in office for nearly two years, took this long to raise the matter. Former BJD MP Munna Khan said, “It is the government’s responsibility to know where official files are kept.”
Former Chief Secretary Bijay Patnaik noted that Odisha adopted a digital file management system around 2012-2013 and expressed hope that electronic copies may still exist.
The SIT investigation is underway.
