Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Inspector General of Orissa Police Mr. Sanjiv Marik, while heading the Orissa Police Academy, has been put under suspension on May 18, following partial reaffirmation of the correctness of the Crime Branch report by the Director General of Police Amarananda Pattanaik after a baffling month of vacillation.
When Mariks nexus with the underworld was discovered by the Crime Branch at Bhadrak and as discussed earlier, the report with documentary evidence received by the DGP from CB and Bhadrak Police was forwarded to government in the third week of April, he should have been suspended immediately. But surprisingly the Home department wanted an enquiry on reliability of the CB report!
It was aired first that Additional DGP Mr. Anup Pattanaik would conduct the enquiry. But the DGP did it.
However, the enquiry he has conducted is not conclusive. Though he has reaffirmed that Marik had tried to facilitate extrication of a notorious gang of Behari criminals from Bhadrak Jail and observed that such a conduct is not becoming of an IGP, he has not uttered anything on his suspected involvement with the conspiracy for jail-break. Assessment of his nexus with Behari underworld needs in-depth investigation, he has reportedly said.
Was he disallowed to conduct the in-depth investigation? Was he required to submit an inconclusive report?
The questions lurk.
The Chief Minister who holds Home portfolio, and with whose father Marik had remarkable rapport, should not allow any suspicion grow in public mind in this particular matter. The dilly-dally about action, the delay in suspension, the DGPs inability to arrive at a conclusion all these have already contributed to a boiling confusion. The Chief Minister should get conscious of it and wake up to the occasion. Any delay in determining Mariks nexus with the underworld would reduce the DGPs credibility and demoralize the police hierarchy and push the people into a sense of utter insecurity.
The sooner this is understood the better.