Top Maoist leader Sabyasachi Panda’s mother Krishna Devi on Wednesday told the Justice AS Naidu Commission of Inquiry, which is probing the murder of Swami laxmanananda Saraswati and the subsequent ethno-communal riots in Kandhamal district in 2008, that the man who gave the interview on television owning up the killing of the Hindu seer was not his son.
“I know my son very well. The man who gave the interview after the murder is not my son. The Government is trying to frame him,” she told the commission when asked to identify the man on the TV screen. This has incidentally been the consistent stand of Panda’s family members. Panda’s lawyer shot back at the media asking, “How can you identify a person you don’t knowIJ The man who gave the interview never claimed to be Sabyasachi Panda. The man was known by various names such as Sunil, Sarat, etc. There is no way it can be claimed that he was Sabyasachi.”
Sabyasachi Panda’s wife Subhashree alias Milli is scheduled to depose before the commission on Thursday. Panda, who was the State secretary of the outlawed CPI(Maoist) at the time, had reportedly told a group of journalists from Bhubaneswar in an interview a few days after the incident that his outfit had killed Saraswati for what he called “spreading hatred among communities”. The Naidu Commission is probing the killing of Saraswati and the riots since 2012 after the demise of Justice Sarat Chandra Mohapatra, who was probing the riot since 2008.
