Firearms, bullets seized from Ramesh Jena hideouts

Berhampur: Town police on Thursday recovered six revolvers and some live bullets from a flat in Bhubaneswar belonging to former Congress legislator Ramesh Jena.

Based on the information shared by Jena’s close aide Prakash Behera during interrogation, police raided Jena’s flat in Jyotsna Apartment sunder Nayapalli police station in the State capital and recovered the firearms and some incriminating documents.

“Santosh Behera had given details about illegal arms trade and other land deals of Ramesh Jena. He had also willfully given information on some hidden firearms secretly kept in the flat of Jena. Based on that, we recovered four revolvers from Bhubaneswar and two from Bhabinipur in Berhampur,” Southern Range IG Amitabh Thakur said.

Official sources said prima facie, the documents seized from Jena’s Bhubaneswar flat seem to be related to land agreements.

“During interrogation, we have come to know that there was an arms trading case filed in Sadar police station in 2014 and Jena was involved in that case. Jena’s driver Anil Nayak was arrested in the case,” Thakur said.

Meanwhile, a fresh land grab case was lodged against Jena today. The ex-Sanakhemundi legislator has been accused of land grabbing in Nimakhandi area of silk city.

“The case has been registered against Jena, former corporator R Murali Mohan and Jena’s aide Buna. All three had grabbed about three acres of land in Nimakhandi area,” an official said.

Meanwhile, after Aska JMFC court’s approval, the police today took Jena on a two-day remand in a land grab case in the area.

Police sources said Behera has revealed during interrogation that the arms were being smuggled to Odisha from Bihar’s Munger district.