The road outside Brahmapur Circle Jail did not look like a prison gate this evening. It looked like a campaign square. Garlands, slogans and a crush of supporters waited as former Brahmapur MLA and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Ganjam district president Bikram Kumar Panda walked out after the Orissa High Court granted him conditional bail in the murder case of BJP leader and Odisha State Bar Council member Pitabas Panda. He had spent about 10 months inside as an undertrial.
The High Court order came on Monday, August 31. Justice Aditya Kumar Mohapatra held that police had not complied with mandatory arrest safeguards — including informing the accused of the grounds of arrest — and directed that Panda be set at liberty on conditions fixed by the trial court. The judge made it clear that the finding on the arrest procedure would not decide the merits of the chargesheet or the pending trial. Once the lower court accepted the bail bond, the release became a political spectacle.
Senior BJD leaders and workers had already packed the jail front. Among those present were former ministers Debi Mishra, Pratap Jena and Sanjay Kumar Dasburma, Manmath Rout, state Biju Yuva Janata Dal president Chinmaya Sahu, Ipsita Sahu, Ranjita Sahu, former MLA Purna Chandra Swain, Srikant Sahu, Brahmapur Mayor Sanghamitra Dalei, Zilla Parishad president Anjali Swain, former BDA chairman Subash Maharana, Jyoti Ranjan Sahu, Girija Shankar Satpathy, Shobhan Nayak and Anil Sahu. Cadres of Biju Yuva Janata Dal, Biju Chatra Janata Dal and Biju Mahila Janata Dal joined the crowd.
From the jail gate, the procession moved through Jail Road, Kamapalli overbridge, Kamapalli Bazar, Courtpeta square, Medical square and Gajapati Nagar square before reaching Panda’s residence at Gajapati Nagar. Thousands of supporters lined the route. At home, he first took the blessings of his parents.
“I have faith in Lord Jagannath and in the honourable court,” Panda said after his release. His father, Kishore Panda, told the gathering that his son was innocent and that the family trusted both the judicial system and Lord Jagannath.
The case that put him behind bars still hangs over Brahmapur’s politics. On the night of October 6 last year, around 10 pm — Pitabas Panda was shot dead near his residence at Baikuntha Nagar while returning home. Police later arrested 16 people, including Bikram Panda, and alleged a conspiracy driven by political, personal and financial rivalry. Panda has consistently denied the charge and said he was falsely implicated. The trial remains pending.
His bail is not a clean slate. Court conditions bar him from harassing, threatening or influencing the victim’s family, the informant or prosecution witnesses. Any breach can bring him back into custody.
For BJD workers in Ganjam, the evening was a show of strength after months of absence. For the courts, it was a reminder that procedure still matters even in a sensational murder case. For Berhampur, it was another chapter in a rivalry that has already claimed one political life and is still being argued, witness by witness, inside the trial court.
