By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/PHULABANI: Five convicted persons in Hindu seer Swami Laxmananda Saraswati murder case in Odisha’s conversion hit tribal dominated Kandhamal districts, were on Thursday got bail from Supreme Court.
The Apex Court ordered bail for five convicted persons in the case involved in Seer’s murder that triggered Kandhamal communal riots in 2008.
The five convicts were sentenced to life imprisonment. The accused – all Christians – have been serving sentences of life imprisonment after a fast track court in Odisha convicted them in October 2013. All were arrested soon after the riots in 2008.
Bhaskar Sunamajhi, Buddhadeb Nayak, Durjo Sunamajhi, Munda Badamajhi, Sanathan Badamajhi, Bijaya Kumar Sanseth and Gornath Chalanseth – were arrested from the Kotagarh jungle in Kandhamal.
Activists have been arguing that the seven were falsely implicated in the case. These groups had appealed in the apex court against the high court’s decisions. They claimed that the seven people – all belonging to the Christian faith – were convicted on the basis of one “Beticola resolution” that was proven to be false.
Notably, in the riots that followed the murder of Saraswati, nearly hundreds were killed and 300 churches and 6,000 houses plundered in a spate of violence that rendered nearly 56,000 homeless.
