Orissa’s uncompromising police personality, IPS (Rtd) Arun Kumar Upadhyay, who, despite serving for decades the heartless profession of policing, has a very unique heart of culture and endless quest for our ancient knowledge, has, in a comment on our obituary on J.B.Patnaik, given a very insightful input that he was privy to and which, I feel, was most needed.
As I thank him for the privilege he granted ORISSA MATTERS to enrich its comment section, I feel that his words on JB should also be available on the home page here. People have the right to know how vested interest elements had conspired to soil him through the Illustrated Weekly.
The Weekly had begged apology for the wrongful report it had published against JB and yet, having failed to overcome the adverse impact of loss of its credibility, had to exterminate its own existence.
People are to be reminded of that.
So, here is what Sri Upadhyay has said in his comment on our posting on JB:
Janaki Babu was a great man in many respects. Even in old age he worked till 2 AM in office and again ready after 4 hours for next day’s work. While out of power, he guided me personally in Yoga practice in Satyananda Yoga Vidyalaya, Bhubaneswar. He could not overcome strong bureaucratic lobby which blackmailed him by false propaganda publications. Police chief first collected & created fake evidence and got it published in Illustrated Weekly by giving it advertisement for first time by the then OTDC Chairman Sri A. B. Tripathy. After blackmail, he became DGP. After publishing material, it was seized and story further publicized by seizing & starting criminal cases.
Even while in power, he discussed with me for 3 hours about Vedic description of Jagannatha in Jagannatha Sanskrit University. Despite some difference, he got it published from Tirupati Vidyapeetha in 2006 where he had granted Rs 50 lakhs to start Orissa chair. It looks old fashioned, but his uniqueness is obvious by his death in a sacred place Tirupati on Akshaya Tritiya date.
It will be difficult to see a similar man.