The disappearance of key inquiry reports on the Kandhamal violence and SUM Hospital fire raises serious concerns about transparency, record management, and democratic accountability in Odisha
Rabindra Kumar Nayak
The disappearance of official government files is never a mere administrative lapse. In a democratic society, public records are repositories of truth, accountability, and institutional memory. When such records go missing, especially those connected with major incidents affecting public life, the loss transcends bureaucratic negligence and enters the realm of public concern. The recent controversy surrounding the disappearance of the Justice A. S. Naidu Commission Report on the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati and the Kandhamal violence, along with the inquiry report on the SUM Hospital fire tragedy, has once again brought this issue into sharp focus.
Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati was assassinated on 23 August 2008 in Kandhamal district. His murder triggered one of the most traumatic episodes of communal violence in Odisha’s history. Given the gravity of the incident, the state government appointed a judicial commission under Justice A. S. Naidu to investigate the circumstances surrounding the murder and the subsequent unrest. After years of inquiry, the commission submitted an extensive report to the government in 2016. Yet, remarkably, the report remained unpublished and largely inaccessible to the public. Now, nearly a decade later, the revelation that the report itself is allegedly missing from official custody has generated widespread concern.
The issue is not merely about a missing document. It concerns the fate of public truth. Judicial commissions are constituted at considerable public expense to investigate matters of significant public interest. Their reports are expected to guide policy decisions, improve governance, and provide closure to victims and society. When such reports disappear, citizens are justified in asking whether institutional mechanisms are functioning as they should.
The present controversy also highlights a deeper problem in Indian governance—the culture of secrecy surrounding inquiry commission reports. Too often, commissions spend years collecting evidence, examining witnesses, and preparing detailed findings, only for their reports to remain buried in government offices. The disappearance of the Naidu Commission Report is particularly troubling because it concerns an event that profoundly shaped Odisha’s social and political landscape. The public has a legitimate right to know what conclusions were reached and what recommendations were made.
Equally alarming is the disappearance of the inquiry report on the 2016 SUM Hospital fire, which claimed numerous lives. Both reports relate to incidents involving loss of human life and significant public interest. Their simultaneous disappearance inevitably raises questions about record management, custodial responsibility, and institutional accountability. The Odisha Government has now initiated a police investigation and registered a criminal case regarding the missing files. While this step is necessary, it should not become an end in itself. The larger objective must be to establish how such crucial documents could vanish from official custody in the first place.
This episode also exposes the weaknesses of archival practices within government institutions. In an era of digitisation and electronic record management, the disappearance of important reports appears particularly disturbing. Reports running into thousands of pages, prepared over several years, should ideally exist in multiple physical and digital copies. The fact that questions are being raised about the availability of even backup copies points to serious deficiencies in public record preservation.
The implications extend beyond Odisha. Across India, instances of missing files, untraceable records, and inaccessible reports have periodically surfaced. Such occurrences weaken public trust in institutions and fuel suspicions of political interference or bureaucratic misconduct. Whether the files were misplaced, neglected, or deliberately removed is ultimately a matter for investigation. However, the mere possibility that records of such significance can disappear underscores the urgent need for comprehensive reforms in public record management.
Democracy depends not only on elections but also on transparency. Governments are temporary; records are permanent. Public documents belong neither to political parties nor to individual office-holders. They belong to the people. Therefore, the disappearance of important inquiry reports should be viewed not simply as an administrative irregularity but as a challenge to democratic accountability itself.
The ongoing investigation may eventually determine who was responsible and how the files disappeared. Yet the larger lesson is already clear. Governments must strengthen archival systems, ensure digital preservation of all inquiry reports, and place such reports in the public domain within a reasonable period. Only then can the ideals of transparency and accountability be meaningfully upheld.
The missing files of the Swami Lakshmanananda murder inquiry and the SUM Hospital fire investigation are not merely missing documents; they symbolise a larger struggle between public memory and institutional forgetfulness. In a democracy committed to truth, such files must never be allowed to disappear.
(The author is a former Reader in English. Views expressed are personal.)