Senior BJD leader and chairman of the State Warehousing Corporation Anup Kumar Sai has been detained for his alleged involvement in a double murder case of a woman and her minor daughter in a village of the neighbouring state almost four years ago, police said.
The three-time MLA from Brijarajanagar, District, Jharsuguda will be subjected to a narco test, police said.
Sai was arrested under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of the evidence) of the Indian Penal Code by the Cyber Crime cell of Chakradharnagar police in the case of twin murders of Kalpana Das (32) and her daughter Pravati Das(14) in a Chhatisgarh village bordering Odisha.
A complaint was filed Kamlesh Gupta resident of village Sambalpuri in Chakradharanagar on May 7, 2016, about the bodies of the two women found on the way.
The bodies were rolled under a vehicle to make it look like an accident. Police said it was able to identify the bodies after one year after a search in six states - Bihar, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Odisha.
SP Raigad Santosh Kumar Singh said that investigation later revealed that the deceased Kalpana Das was a resident of Brajrajnagar and also that she had a connection with former MLA Anup Kumar Sai.
However, the police could not proceed due to a lack of evidence. Investigations including call detail records led police to suspect the hand of the former MLA in the killings.
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On Wednesday night, on the instructions of SP Santosh Singh, Raigad police reached Brajrajnagar and took former Anup Sai into custody.
Anoop Kumar Sai was earlier associated with the Congress and was elected from the Brajrajnagar seat as a Congress MLA. He then joined the BJD.
The Biju Janata Dal has expelled Sai from the party and removed him from the post of chairman of State Warehousing Corporation.