Ghasipura: Tension ran high after a trader was hacked to death during his sleep by miscreants near Khalana petrol pump square on National Highway-215 under Ramachandrapur police limits in Keonjhar district late Sunday night.
Victim Susant Kumar Sahu, a native of Khalana village, was trading in cement and iron rods and had a shop near the Khalana petrol pump square. The incident occurred when he was sleeping outside his shop as Sunday.
He was found lying dead with cut marks on his head and streams of blood flowing down on the road. The matter came to the fore after a tractor driver noticed him lying in a pool of blood and raised an alarm. Hundreds of locals rushed to the spot and informed Ramachandrapur police.
IIC Suryakanti Dash rushed to the spot with a police force and started an investigation. A forensic team and sniffer dogs were pressed into service. A case was registered in this connection and the body was sent for post-mortem to Anandapur hospital.
The killing sparked serious outrage among residents as thousands of locals assembled at the site and staged a blockade on the highway.
They burnt tyres and demanded arrest of the accused within 24 hours. The agitators got fillip when state rural development minister Badri Narayan Patra and Ghasipura block chairperson Debashis Patra arrived at the site and demanded arrest of the accused. The road blockade threw traffic out of gear as hundreds of vehicles were left stranded on both sides of the highway for long hours.
Later, Anandapur SDPO Amulya Kumar Routray and his counterpart Maheshwar Sethy, Ghasipura IIC Madhabananda Nayak and his Anandapur counterpart Sudarshan Panda arrived at the spot with three platoons of force but failed to clamp down on the protestors. They withdrew the stir at 2.30 pm after persuasion.
Preliminary inquiries indicated that the injury marks on the deceased’s head are due to repeated assaults by the miscreants with sharp-edged weapons. The miscreants before killing him removed all the lights outside his shop.
The sniffer dog led the police from the murder site to Khalana village and moved around the houses of four persons as police recovered a murder weapon from one of the houses.
When contacted, SDPO Amulya Kumar Routray said the probe is being expedited and the accused will be nabbed soon. PNN
