BhubaneswarOctober 23, 2025 09:00 AM IST
First published on: Oct 23, 2025 at 09:00 AM IST
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 due to financial, personal and political reasons,” Berhampur SP Sarvana Vivek M said.
Pitabash, three years junior to Bikram, began his politics with a Left-affiliated students’ organisation but later joined the Congress, where Bikram was already active. The duo grew closer in 2000, when Bikram made an unsuccessful Assembly poll debut, and fought and lost successive elections in 2004, 2009 and 2014.
Their friendship later got strained as the two chose different political paths. Bikram joined the BJD in 2018 along with his close aide and former Union minister Chandra Sekhar Sahu, while Pitabash joined the BJP ahead of last year’s simultaneous Assembly and Lok Sabha polls.
According to the police, differences between the two leaders surfaced earlier in 2013 after Pitabash won the Odisha State Bar Council election but failed to secure the post of vice-chairperson. “Pitabash believed that Bikram’s influence was key in him not getting the post. On the other hand, Bikram believed Pitabash’s influence after the BJP came to power in the state was the reason for his financial losses in multiple ventures,” a senior police officer said.
The investigation so far has reportedly revealed that Bikram and Das engaged their closest associates to hatch a conspiracy to eliminate Pitabash, who they believed was a roadblock to their future.
Bikram, on the other hand, first tasted electoral victory in 2019 as a BJD nominee from Berhampur but lost the Assembly polls last year to the BJP from the nearby Gopalpur seat. In August, the BJD, which was on the lookout for a young leader to spearhead its organisation in Ganjam, appointed him as the district president.
The police probe also points to an election petition filed in the Orissa High Court after the 2024 polls reportedly at Das’s behest and allegedly with Bikram’s help. Police say Das, who contested the 2019 and 2024 Assembly polls from Berhampur as an Independent, believed Pitabash’s influence was the reason the BJP denied him candidature.
“As the election petition is in the final stages of hearing, both Das and Bikram believed that the Berhampur Assembly poll would be declared null, necessitating a bypoll for which Bikram eyed a BJD ticket,” the SP said, adding that Bikram hoped Das would support him. In return, Bikram would support Das for the upcoming mayoral poll.
The BJD has come out in his Bikram’s support and accused the police of framing him at the BJP’s behest. “His arrest is a conspiracy to tarnish the BJD’s image,” senior party leader Pramila Mallik said.