Ranjan’s murder was political: Necessary is CBI inquiry

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Thus, Chief Minister’s attempt to kill the Bhasha Andolan by taming a couple of avaricious activists of the movement was foiled by Ranjan Kumar Das and his friends.

This Ranjan Kumar Das was murdered when he finalized his plan to start a cycle campaign with the movement’s celebrated Black Flags. Everyday, the movement has been posting an appeal to the Chief Minister for investigation into the murder of Das in the social media Face Book, where the Government has its digital presence. But no investigation has yet commenced in right earnest.

Circumstances centering the murder strongly suggest that it was political in nature, in tune with the CM’s design to foil the movement for governance of Orissa in Oriya Language.

The CM is personally so motivated against the movement that, to gain over Pradyumna Satpathi, my close associate, his office had forced the officers of higher education department to create situations for him to fetch more than a crore of rupees as enticement for sabotaging the Bhasha Andolan. I had to write “Supari against Bhasha Andolan: CM’s silence strongly suggests his involvement“, which goes unchallenged as yet.

It would be worth-mention that, the CM had suppressed the lawful Cabinet decision of 14 March 2018 to insert Section 4A in the Orissa Official Language Act on 1 May 2018 by linking the same to a political resolution of his party wrongfully branded as Cabinet decision taken at Puri. He even had inserted Section 4 in the Act in 2016 sans sanction of Law with the sole motive of pushing the Act into atrophy. In this nefarious design, he even had tampered with the Bill vetted and approved by the department of Law! As I discussed in Nitidin dated 11 May 2018 the details of illegality in the amendment caused by the CM to the Act, the newspaper run by a mining house, in situational fear of the CM’s power, had to show the CMO that the editor was made to quit.

The Press was so managed that, when Satpathy and his gang, gained over by the government declared on 16 July 2018 that Bhasha Andolan has stopped the Black Flag Campaign, none of the Press had thought it professionally prudent to verify the truth from me, even though all of them knew that the movement is my brainchild. Even my version in the matter the next day suffered a complete media blackout, confidential confession of an editor pointing at the CMO as the cause.

Against this backdrop Ranjan’s steps encapsulated in the video above devastated the Chief Minister’s design to wipe out Bhasha Andolan. The Govt. was forced to declare that necessary amendments in the Act would soon be made to enforce Oriya use in every office and public place. When the Assembly commenced, there was no proposal before it to amend the Act. I came down heavily upon the Chief Minister and his new pets.

This was in the evening of 4 September 2018. It inspired friends from Khurda to dare heavy rains to reach Bhubaneswar with Black Flags on 5 September 2018 demanding amendment of the Act, as assured to people of Orissa after the long-distance Black Flag march led by Ranjan Kumar Das.

When these brave Oriyas reached Bhubaneswar, the CMO, in fidgets, wanted its new pet Pradyumna Satpathy to blur its impact by any means. He resorted to tactics of confusion by declaring over camera that I was no more in the Bhasha Andolan! He used many obnoxious terms on me to please the CM. But got nervous when I asked him to confirm if he had hurled the words at me. As the channel head SriRam Dash told me, Satpathy fell at his feet to hide the video from public gaze. I had to deal with the issue in a write-up after it was clear that he had no guts to support his own version.

Sri Naveen Patnaik was so nervous that he shepherded Sec.3A of the Act created by his father in 1963 – very unusual on his part – back into the Assembly in partial acceptance of my demand dated 3rd March 2016, in the Official Language (2nd Amendment) Bill, 2018, a matter, which would be better to elaborate in a separate article. But, this amendment was worded to continue the illegality of Section 4A created to defeat the very purpose of the Act.

To make people aware of this mischief, Ranjan offered to move all over the State along with his friends in cycle with the Black Flags of Bhasha Andolan. He was murdered, as he was finalizing his tour program with his friends. Police has not investigated into his murder as yet.

We in Bhasha Andolan and his colleagues in Soochana Adhikar Abhiyan have been agitating for investigation into his murder. But the Police seems determined not to investigate.

We find a similarity between the murder of Pt. Laxminarayan Mishra of Sambalpur and the murder of Ranjan.

Mishra’s super-active emphasis on governance of Orissa in Oriya after independence and on enforcement of the Orissa Official Language Act after it was enacted in 1954 had irked the non-Oriya elements in power and his murder was not investigated into, as Biju Patnaik, avowedly averse to administration in Oriya, had taken over the reins of Orissa. The State in the control of his son, equally averse to administration in Oriya, is not investigating into the murder of Ranjan, whose devotion to Oriya Language had foiled the CM’s conspiracy to destroy the Bhasha Andolan.

In the circumstances, CBI inquiry into his murder seems to be the only possible way to apprehend the culprit.