JAJPUR: In an incident of post-poll violence, six persons were injured, four of them grievously, after a clash broke out between supporters of winning and losing sarpanch candidates at Banasahi village under Mangalpur panchayat in Dasarathapur block here on Wednesday night.
The injured persons included Pradip Mahapatra, husband of the losing sarpanch candidate Pankajini Mahapatra. In her FIR, Pankajini accused the supporters of winning sarpanch candidate Sasmita Dhal and her husband Sisir behind the attack.
“The villagers who supported me in the recently-concluded three-tier panchayat elections were returning home after attending a meeting in my house on Wednesday night. All of a sudden, supporters of Sasmita including Sisir attacked them. When my husband came to their rescue, he too was also assaulted,” she claimed. The injured were rushed to the local hospital. Later, two of them were shifted to SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack after their condition deteriorated.
Following the incident, Pankajini lodged a complaint with police. On Thursday, hundreds of supporters of Pankajini also gheraoed Mangalpur police station demanding immediate arrest of the accused. Basing on the complaint, police registered a case and detained two persons for questioning. Further investigation is underway.
In a separate incident, some miscreants allegedly hurled stones at the house of a losing sarpanch candidate at Achutpur village within Dharmasala police limits. The candidate, Nirmala Biswal, has filed a complaint in the local police station in this connection. Dharmasala police have launched an investigation and no one has been arrested so far.