Bhubaneswar: Four years after a forest officer of Odisha died of burns under mysterious circumstances, the Orissa high court on Wednesday dismissed petitions by his wife and a divisional forest officer (DFO) against a lower court direction to treat them as the murder accused.
The high court rejected petitions by Bidyabharati Panda, wife of the deceased assistant conservator of forest Soumya Ranjan Mohapatra and former Paralakhemundi divisional forest officer Sangram Behera, who challenged the April 2023 order of a sub-divisional judicial magistrate to investigate and try the two for murder.
Soumya Ranjan Mohapatra, a 2020-batch Odisha Forest Service officer in the Paralakhemundi area of Gajapati district, sustained 80% burns at home on July 11, 2021. Mohapatra, who had married in December 2020, was rushed to government hospitals in Berhampur and Cuttack before being shifted to a private facility where he died.
At the time, Mohapatra’s father Abhiram alleged that the DFO and his daughter-in-law were in a relationship and killed his son.
The state CID, which probed the case, however, did not find any evidence that indicated that he had been killed or that he died by suicide and classified it as an accidental death. The team gave a clean chit to DFO Sangram Keshari Behera and cook Manmath Kumbh, but booked his wife Bidya Bharati for causing death by negligence and negligent conduct with respect to fire or combustible matter. The CID also said it hadn’t found any evidence to support allegations that the DFO and Mohapatra’s wife were in a relationship.
The officer’s father subsequently approached the sub-divisional judicial magistrate’s court, which in April 2023, ordered that Panda, DFO Behera and cook Manmath Kumbh be investigated and tried for murder and criminal conspiracy charges. The police subsequently registered a case against Panda, Behera, and Kumbh, accusing them of committing murder.
{{/usCountry}}The officer’s father subsequently approached the sub-divisional judicial magistrate’s court, which in April 2023, ordered that Panda, DFO Behera and cook Manmath Kumbh be investigated and tried for murder and criminal conspiracy charges. The police subsequently registered a case against Panda, Behera, and Kumbh, accusing them of committing murder.
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