File picture of the Naidu Commission during one of its meetings in Cuttack

Cuttack, April 30: The Justice A.S. Naidu commission, which is probing into the Cuttack-Khurda hooch tragedy, has decided to submit an interim report to the Odisha government within a week.

“The commission decided to submit interim directions to the government before the next sitting on May 6. The decision was taken in its third sitting today while hearing a petition seeking interim report to the State government suggesting measures to control illegal sale of drugs containing intoxicating substances,” secretary of the commission Kasinath Panigrahi told The Telegraph.

A city-based lawyer had filed the petition. Petitioner counsel Milan Kanungo sought immediate submission of an interim report on the ground that the excise department was being unnecessarily blamed when the duty to control sale of spurious drugs was vested with the health department as well as the drugs controller.

Moreover, chemical analysis reports indicated that the Epeecarm bottles seized from the spot of the deaths contained a sizeable percentage of methyl alcohol. Drugs controller Hrushikesh Mohapatra had pointed out that chemical analysis of Epeecarm bottles seized from the pharmaceutical company producing the drug had not revealed presence of methyl alcohol.

Advocate Durga Charan Mohanty and other lawyers present on behalf of other parties argued that an interim report would prejudice the final report. Moreover, it would be premature to pass any order. The commission, however, decided to submit an interim report despite the resistance.

The Odisha government had, on February 10, appointed the Commission of Inquiry, headed by a retired judge of the high court “to inquire into the circumstances and sequence of events leading to the deaths” in Cuttack and Khurda districts from February 6 to 9. “The commission further directed all the officers — both police and excise involved in the investigation — to file affidavits within a week,” Panigrahi said.

“The government is also expected to provide before the next sitting a counsel for the commission or engage a counsel to appear on its behalf,” he said.

The commission had so far received 56 affidavits. Those who filed affidavits included drugs controller Hrishikesh Mohapatra, principal scientific officer and chemical examiner of State Drugs Testing and Research Laboratory Rajkishore Das, Khurda collector Roopa Mishra and superintendent of SCB Medical College and Hospital D.N. Moharana.

The commission is expected to report “the source of supply of the product which caused the death and persons or organisations responsible for supply and sale of such product” and “involvement or negligence, if any, of the field officials of the Odisha government in detecting and preventing such malpractice”.