Jailhouse rock, the ‘others’ in the dock
It was close to 11 p.m. on October 16. A posse of police personnel knocked on the door of a rented house in Hilltown, Bhawanipatna, the headquarters of Odisha’s Kalahandi district. Dr. Randall Sequeira, 39, opened the door. He was arrested along with Laxman Naik, a 31-year-old Dalit activist who was also in the house. The following day, the police linked their arrests to a violent clash that had taken place 192 days earlier.
Neither Sequeira nor Naik were among the 26 villagers initially named in FIR No. 85/2026, which was registered at the Kashipur police station in the neighbouring Rayagada district. Instead, the police added them later. They were allegedly identified from a category of 100 unnamed ‘others’ from Kantamal town, in Rayagada’s Kashipur, mentioned in the FIR.
