Remembering him as an enthusiastic traveller and adventure-lover, hundreds gathered at a funeral ground in G Udayagiri in Odisha’s Kandhamal district to bid farewell to 26-year-old Bhibas Nayak days after he was killed near Hampi in Karnataka. “He loved to travel, explore new places, make new friends and do adventurous things. Whenever he got time from his work, he would make plans to travel. He used to go on four-five trips every year,” Nayak’s cousin Firoz Pradhan, 37, told The Indian Express after the funeral on Sunday. He died after allegedly being pushed into a canal in the Anegundi area of Karnataka’s Koppal district on March 6. According to Karnataka Police, he was among a group of five tourists allegedly attacked by three construction workers, who were “under the influence of illegal substances”. Of the five, three were men and two were women. The accused allegedly pushed the men into the canal and gangraped the two women, including an Israeli national. Nayak’s body was recovered from the canal on Saturday morning. All the accused have been arrested, police said. Nayak worked in the administrative department at St Stephen’s Hospital, Delhi. He did his graduation in Business Management (BBA) from Madras Christian College, Chennai, and pursued his Masters in Finance and Administration at the Bombay Stock Exchange Institute, Mumbai. His father Bijay Kumar Nayak is the sixteenth Moderator of the Church of North India (CNI) as well as Bishop, Diocese of Agra, CNI. Bhibas Nayak was the younger of two siblings. “I don’t know whether he (Bhibas) knew swimming, and I’m not aware what exactly happened on that day. But he had once told me that he wanted to learn how to swim whenever he would visit our home,” Firoz said. He demanded an impartial investigation into the incident. Ajay Nayak, Bhibas’s uncle, who had gone to Karnataka to receive the body, said that the local police told him Bhibas was killed when he tried to stop the accused from raping the two women.
