Orissa: Maoists kidnap District Collector of Malkangiri district

Bhubaneswar: A senior IAS officer in Orissa's Malkangiri district has been kidnapped by the Maoists. District Collector R Vineel Krishna was kidnapped while he was returning after an interaction programme in Gumma block of tribal-dominated Malkangiri district.

The incident happened on Wednesday, just two days before Home Minister P Chidambaram's scheduled video-conference with the Collectors of 60 Maoist-hit districts.

Malkangiri Additional SP A Das said there has been no communication with the Collector since Wednesday afternoon. Thirty-year-old Vineel Krishna, an IIT-Madras graduate, joined administrative service in 2005. Krishna was posted as the District Collector of Malkangiri 16 months ago. He is known to be popular with the local people and interacts closely with them.



Malkangiri in Orissa is a Naxal-dominated border district. Maoists use a passage through the southern-most Orissa town of Motu in Malkangiri district to travel from Chhattisgarh to Andhra Pradesh. They also use the area as a corridor to crossover to the thickly-forested areas of Andhra. Most of the people living here are tribals.

Along with the District Collector, the Maoists had also kidnapped two junior engineers. One of them was freed on Wednesday itself. He was sent back with a note giving an ultimatum of 48 hours for the release of the Collector. The Maoists want Central forces to be withdrawn from Malkangiri.