HISTORY OF OPPRESSION
IIDCO chief managing director LN Gupta might brush off the Kalinga Nagar killings as a "law and order' issue, but tribals and independent monitors allege the shooting was yet another instance of a long history of systematic state-sponsored aggression to crush tribal resistance to land acquisition.
The state government wanted to send a warning to those opposed to industrialization in any way by this police repression, said a ruling Biju Janata Dal insider. Naveen Patnaik had already declared on the Assembly floor last year that any such opposition would be quashed and he reiterated as much to top industrialists at a private party at Naveen Nivas on 28 December,2005 the insider alleged. From the December 29,2005 onwards police and bureaucrats were being mobilized to Kalinga Nagar.