CB files chargesheet in SDJM court

The State Crime Branch on Monday filed a 300-page chargesheet against Punjilal Meher, the sole accused in the sensational Patnagarh gift parcel blast case at the SDJM court in Patnagarh.

The chargesheet stated that Punjilal had hatched a conspiracy to settle personal scores with Sanjukta Sahoo, mother of deceased techie Soumyashekhar after she took charge as the new Principal of Jyoti Vikash College in Bhainsa.

Before Sanjukta’s appointment, Punjilal was holding the post of Principal in the college.

As many as 72 eyewitnesses including Sanjukta and her husband Rabindra Sahoo, 12 Lecturers and staff of Jyoti Vikash College, five police officials, DTDC Courier staff and owner of Skyking Courier Service in Raipur in Chhattishgarh have been listed in the chargesheet against Punjilal. Two employees of the motorcycle stand at Kantabanji, where Punjilal kept his motorbike before leaving for Raipur have also been included in the list of witnesses. In the chargesheet, the CB stated that the reports of the video recorded during crime reconstruction where Punjilal demonstrated assembling of the parcel bomb sent to Forensic Laboratory in Bhubaneswar is yet to be received.

Similarly, the reports of mobile phone, pen drive and hard disk recovered from the possession of the accused and sent to Gujarat Laboratory are yet to reach, the CB said in the chargesheet.

Once the reports arrive, they will be presented before the court, informed the CB adding that it has not been able to track the three main eyewitnesses, the auto-rickshaw driver and two cycle-rickshaw pullers who took Punjilal to the courier agencies to dispatch the parcel in Raipur.

On February 23, newly-wed groom Soumyasekhar and his grandmother were killed in an explosion while opening a parcel they had received as wedding gift by courier at their Patnagarh house. Deceased Soumyasekhar’s wife Reema Sahoo had sustained critical injuries in the incident.