Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
The climate of criminality that the continuous misrule of Navin Patnaik has clamped on Orissa has culminated in bloody attack on mediapersons on duty by the mafia that has been ruling the roost in techno education sector.
One such joint of techno education, operating at Chandrasekharpur of Bhubaneswar, called Silicon Engineering College, is now marked for having hosted bloodshed in the night of April 22 in its attempt to eliminate proofs of the havoc it had played on the lives of its students.
It has a captive canteen where the staff and the students are almost forced to eat. A third year student, Samsuddin Shah, soon after taking food in this canteen succumbed to suspected food poisoning and as many as seventy other students, who had taken food in the same batch, reportedly showed symptoms of severe suffering.
This sad news spread like wildfire and around 1500 students could escape pangs of death as they, thereafter, abstained from taking that food.
But Shah’s demise and others’ reported critical condition ignited a demand for immediate action against the canteen staff and for forensic test of the food the canteen had fed the students with.
Instead of taking prompt steps in this respect, the College activated its repressive methods, which precipitated the situation.
The media rushed to the spot.
As the plight of the students was being recorded, a surprise attack was unleashed on them, the cameras and cameramen being the instant targets. The mafia was determined to obliterate the proofs captured by the cameras come what may. To what extent the operators of the joint were bloodthirsty may be seen from this picture of Rohan of Kanak TV, placed here just for example.
As Journalists all over Orissa are registering their protests against assault on mediamen, a Director of the institute and two of his associates have been apprehended and sent to the judicial custody.
How the guilty would be punished in this case depends upon probity of the police. But what is easily comprehensible is that were Orissa not been engulfed by the climate of criminality, the bloody attack on Press at the Silicon Engineering College could not have happened.
This College was just a display point of antagonism patronized against the Press.