Bhubaneswar: Reopening a 12-year-old mysterious disappearance case of a senior executive of Paradip-based stevedore company, Paradip Police have started interrogating senior executives of Odisha Stevedores Limited (OSL). They quizzed Santosh Kumar Patel, Assistant General Manager (AGM) and Mir Adbul Khaliq, Deputy General Manager (operation) of OSL in Cuttack on Tuesday.
Niranjan Padhi, an official of a rival stevedores company of JM Buxi and Co, is untraceable since last 12 years. A missing report had been lodged then by the company. Police had failed to elicit any sort of clue on the whereabouts after a prolonged search operation.
“On April 1, we had issued notices to both the officials of OSL to appear before the police in Paradip police station on April 4 for inquiry. We interrogated them for around four hours. In 2005, Niranjan Padhi, working at Gopalpur and Paradip, went missing after receiving threats from the OSL. It was only during the grilling of Qadir Khan alias Ashok Bihari (38) from Howrah of West Bengal in Mahendra Swain murder case, that the involvement of OSL officials in the missing of Padhi was revealed. Qadir was arrested on March 19. Swain, General Manager of Hyderabad based Seaways Shipping and Logistics Limited (SSLL) at Paradip, was gunned down by four criminals on October 26 last year. We also interrogated them on Mahendra Swain murder case. We will soon interrogate others in this case,'' said IIC of Paradip police station, Subharshnu Sekhar Nayak.
It is pertinent to note that the police had cracked the murder case of Mahendra Swain after arresting 11 persons including Mahimananda Mishra, Managing Director of OSL.
“We have submitted a 500-page charge-sheet at the JMFC Kujang against all the accused under section 302 (murder), 120- b (criminal conspiracy), section 20, 25 and 27 of Arms Act and section 3 and 8 of Indian Explosive Substances Act in Mahendra Swain murder case. We have stated there that the old stevedoring business rivalry was the motive behind Swain’s murder and OSL's involvement in it,” the IIC added.