Bhubaneswar, : The Bhadrak based Videographer, Manas Swain’s murder mystery is taking diversified turns almost every day.
Though Chandabali police have nabbed six accused including some conspirators in this connection, local police is still away from the kingpins to crack the mystery-shrouded over the incident so far.
Basing the statement of a prime eye-witness, the police has reached at five accused those allegedly kidnapped Manas from a marriage party and kept them captive in a spiritual institution. Subsequently, the confrontations of the accused revealed that Sarmistha Rout, the proprietor of Sampoorna Web News was the mastermind of Manas’ kidnapping and murder case.
Sarmistha, accompanied by a number of her aides, sitting in a Bolero threatened Manas in the marriage function in order to hand over a microchip. However, Manas was kidnapped from the social function as he defied Sarmistha’s command and denied surrendering the microchip to them, said the prime eyewitness to the investigation officer.
Acting on it, a police team moved Bhubaneswar to nab the Kingpin, Sarmistha from her in-law’s house-cum- newsroom, located at the Sky Tower apartment under the Airfield police limit. However, being alerted, Sarmistha evaded police arrest, fleeing elsewhere. Apart from it, a number of teams of Bhadrak police conducted frequent raids at the office-cum residence of Sarmistha in Bhubaneswar, but in vain.
Similarly, Commissionerate police also failed to trace and track the lady don after a number of sleuths kept vigil on her, for days together.
Similarly, four teams of police who were deployed in the bordering states including Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Telangana, to nab Sarmistha also failed to find any clue regarding her. However, a team caught Sarmistha’s brother, Parameswar Rout from the Vijayawada area on March 22.
Police could find no clue regarding Sarmistha from his brother during frantic interrogation and subsequent confrontation with the other arrestees. Parameswar purged nothing about the murder case, even on his appearance in Vijayawada, during joint quizzing. At the same time, Rout renounced his involvement or knowledge regarding the crime committed by his sister. Significantly, Parameswar repeated his ignorance about any microchip, which became fatal for Manas.
Niranjan Sethy, a former OIS officer and the Director of the I&PR Department who is behind the bars also denied his connivance with Manas murder case. He also expressed his ignorance about the microchip, which was said to be the lifeline for Manas.
In his statement recorded by the police under Section 161, Niranjan said that he was not involved in the crime, even he had no relationship with Sarmistha. However, the statement of Sethi contradicted, when the Security guard deployed at Sarmistha’s web portal office disclosed Sethi’s frequent visit to the office, personified as the Director of the News portal.
