Journalism of Courage
A district court in Odisha on Monday sentenced former CPI MLA Nagireddi Narayan Reddy to life imprisonment in connection with the death of a police inspector during a clash in June 1998 over land acquisition for a steel plant by Tata Steel.
The additional district judge (ADJ)-3 court at Berhampur pronounced the verdict against Reddy and 12 others for their involvement in the death of Reserve Police Inspector, Binoba Meher.
Reddy, who represented the Chatrapur assembly constituency from 2004-2009, said that he and others convicted would challenge the verdict in the higher courts.
On June 18, 1998, during a meeting called by the administration at Sindhigaon village, a clash broke out between agitators and police. Meher was killed in the confrontation. Later, a case was registered under Section 302 of the IPC against Reddy and 22 others, of whom eight persons are already dead.
A native of Chamakhandi, Reddy was also a trade union leader who spearheaded the agitation against land acquisition. Reddy was also arrested in December 2011 for violence against land acquisition at Erasama by South Korean steel behemoth POSCO, which later pulled out of the project.
Tata Steel, in August 1995, had proposed to set up a steel plant at Gopalpur in Ganjam for which around 3,000 acres of land was acquired by the Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation amid stiff resistance from locals. The company subsequently aborted the plan. In 2010, it decided to set up an industrial park and special economic zone (SEZ) on the acquired land.
The industrial park includes a multi-product SEZ over an area of 2,570 acres and the Gopalpur ferro chrome plant project by Tata steel which was commissioned in 2017. Several other units are also coming up within the SEZ.
In October last year, the Odisha government approved a proposal to return unutilised land of around 206 acres in Kalipali village in Ganjam acquired for the Tata project to the original land owners.
