Arrested for alleged Maoist activities, a social activist’s son has accused the police of framing him and sought the intervention the Odisha high court in a letter from jail to chief justice V Gopala Gowda. “I am neither involved in any criminal activities nor am a member of any Maoist organization. I do not have any links with the Maoists nor do I believe in their ideology,” Sangram Mohanty, 32, now on a hunger strike in jail since his arrest since December 5, said in his letter.

His letter dated December 8, alleged that the the police abducted Sangram, a qualified engineer running his own transport business, from Berhampur in Ganjam district and then showed him as arrested for Maoist activities in Mohana in adjoining Gajapati district (about 250km southwest of Bhubaneswar) at the behest of a ruling BJD
MLA against whom he had filed a case of land-grabbing.

Sangram is the son of social and human rights activist Dandapani Mohanty, whom the Odisha government engaged twice to negotiate with the Maoists for the release of former Malkangiri collector R Vineel Krishna in 2011 and two Italian citizens in 2012 from their captivity.