Jharsuguda: The Chhattisgarh High Court Thursday granted conditional bail to former Brajarajnagar MLA Anup Sai in the sensational double murder case, reports said.
The Raigarh Sessions Judge Court had on April 2 this year awarded life imprisonment to Sai after convicting him for the murder of Kalpana Das and her 14-yr-old daughter whose bodies were recovered from Hamirpur in Raigarh district in 2016.
Sai had moved the Chhattisgarh High Court against the Sessions Court’s order and had sought bail.
A division bench of the High Court Justice Sanjay K Agarwal and Justice Dipak Tiwari granted bail to Sai after conducting a hearing on the matter, reports said.
Both Sai and his driver Burdhan Toppo were arrested by the Chhattisgarh police on February 13, 2020, on charges of murdering Kalpana Das and her daughter Bubly. Both were murdered on May 5, 2016, and their bodies were recovered near Hamirpur forest in Raigarh district of the State.
The post-mortem report of the deceased revealed that they were first hit with a blunt object before being run over by a vehicle to pass it off as a road accident. When mobile phone calls of Kalpana were traced, suspicion turned toward Sai. The police found evidence against the former MLA in 2017, and it took them three years to arrest him.
Sai was booked under sections 302, 201, 120(B), and 34 of the IPC. The trial began in 2020 and the court recorded the statement of 50 witnesses on the basis of which Sai was found guilty of the double murder.
However, Sai’s driver Toppo was acquitted of all charges on the benefit of doubt.
Reports said that Sai was allegedly in a relationship with Kalpana since 2011 but conspired to eliminate her when she insisted on marriage and also demanded a share in his property.
As per Chhattisgarh police, Sai was staying with Kalpana and her daughter in a three-story building in Bhubaneswar as a family.
She also wanted the building, purchased by Sai, to be transferred in her name. That is when Sai conspired to eliminate the two.
On May 5, 2016, Sai took Kalpana and Bubly in his car to Raigarh on the pretext of marriage. But on the way, he fatally assaulted both and to make it look like an accident crushed the bodies under his vehicle several times before fleeing to Odisha via Hamirpur.
Sai was elected to Odisha Assembly consecutively from the Brajarajnagar constituency for three terms from 2000 to 2009 on a Congress ticket. He joined BJD in 2014 and fought the elections, but lost.
He was suspended from the party and removed as the chairperson of Odisha State Warehousing Corporation after his arrest.
