It was in the late 1990s that two friends bearing the same surname – Panda – became active members of the Youth Congress in Odisha’s Berhampur.

About two-and-a-half decades later, on October 6, one of them – BJP leader and noted lawyer Pitabash Panda – was shot dead by two bike-borne assailants. As expected, his friend and former BJD MLA from Berhampur, Bikram Panda, reached his friend’s house to console the bereaved family. Bikram also demanded the strictest punishment for his friend’s killers.

The sequence of events seemed normal until Wednesday, when the Berhampur police arrested 12 people, including Bikram, on charges of criminal conspiracy in Pitabash’s murder.

“Bikram and former Berhampur Mayor Siba Shankar Das, who had personal enmity with Pitabash, conspired to eliminate him d

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