Charchit Mishra, 39, was detained by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on August 6 when they were looking into a bribery case at the Paradip Port Authority on the coast of Odisha. It wasn’t a significant financial fraud in the case itself. a bribe of 25 lakh rupees was paid to the port’s head engineer to prevent the payment of around 1 crore rupees in damages for a broken conveyor belt. But given who Mishra is and how the authorities have been attempting to apprehend him, it gained significance.
Mahimananda Mishra, also known as Mahima Mishra, is one of Odisha’s most powerful businessmen and is the father of Charchit Mishra. He is 69 years old. This incident adds another chapter to a legendary life of intrigue for a guy who rose through the ranks, established a corporate empire, ruled without challenge the second-largest cargo port in India after Kandla, dabbled in politics, and faced charges of murder, bribery, and strong-arm tactics. He has never been found guilty and disputes every accusation.
A day before Charchit was detained, Saroj Das, the Paradip Port Authority’s chief mechanical engineer, who oversees the upkeep and repairs of mechanical and electrical equipment, was detained on suspicion of receiving a bribe from Mishra’s company, Orissa Stevedores Limited (OSL).
The process of loading or unloading cargo onto or from a ship is known as stevedoring.
The OSL employees allegedly harmed the port’s conveyor belt while offloading cargo, according to the CBI’s FIR. OSL was required to repair the belt for 70 lakh rupees, but the port paid for the refurbishment, purportedly to the company’s financial advantage. According to the FIR, the chief mechanical engineer allegedly wanted a bribe of 60 lakh rupees but was caught accepting only 25 lakh.
Mahima Mishra and his 42-year-old eldest son Chandan, a director at OSL, were summoned to the CBI headquarters in Bhubaneswar on August 5 and questioned for more than 20 hours. Mishra’s next day of
After receiving information concerning probable wrongdoing at the Paradip Port Trust, the CBI started looking into the case in July. According to a CBI officer who begged to remain anonymous, “the raid is part of a push to clear major infrastructure locations like ports and the railways of corruption.”
A team of CBI investigators has been poring into the port authority’s files in Paradip for much of the past month in search of proof of alleged financial irregularities that may have benefited OSL or other private enterprises at the expense of the port. Although six other persons have been detained in connection with the case so far, Mahima Mishra, a first-generation businessman from Odia who developed an empire but has become the subject of controversy, is currently the centre of attention.
Modest Beginning
Mahima Mishra, the sole child of modest writer in the languages of Odia and Bengali Rabindra Nath Mishra, was raised in Cuttack and attended Bhakta Madhya Vidyapeetha, a school in the city’s Odia Bazaar neighbourhood. After earning his LLB from the Madhu Sudan Law College in Cuttack and his MA in English from Utkal University, Mishra completed his studies in 1973. Mishra dabbled in politics during this time, attracted the attention of the Congress, and in 1974 was chosen to lead the Cuttack law college students’ union.
Mishra rapidly changed his focus to business, giving labour to the port’s already-existing stevedoring agencies in 1976 after beginning by supplying sand to Paradip building enterprises.
Nishamani Khuntia, a Congress leader, established a trade union in Paradip in 1975. At the time, Nandini Satpathy, the Congress chief minister, intended to establish a competing union. “She dispatched Mahima Mishra to assist with this. Satpathy served as chief minister for two years, but Mahima Mishra’s company remained successful even after she left office during the next Congress administration, which was led by JB Patnaik. He established Orissa Stevedores Limited, his first business, in 1978, according to former BJD minister Panchanan Kanungo.
When he successfully finished the shipment of wheat flour sent by the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere Foods, an international humanitarian organisation now known by its acronym CARE, for the container shipping company American President Line in 1979, he received his first significant break as an independent stevedoring firm.
When ships dock in a port, stevedores load and unload cargo. A local stevedoring agent must be in place before a ship can dock at a port to handle the process.
Mishra established the Paradip Port Stevedoring Association of Companies in 1982. This group of modest stevedoring firms recognised Mishra as their chairman, and the association quickly gained a near monopoly on the industry.
“He (Mahima) had almost complete control over the stevedoring industry in Paradip port from the 1990s to the middle of the 2010s, ensuring that there were no competitors. Despite being uncompetitive, OSL’s stevedoring fees had to be paid by the ships of companies who wished to berth in the port, according to a senior executive of a logistics company.
Mahima Mishra continued to expand. He expanded from stevedoring into the hospitality industry, education, mining, car dealerships, chartered aviation, and construction. OSL Motors Pvt. Ltd., DPS Kalinga, Orissa Magnetic Private Ltd., and Nandighosh Coal & Coke Product Pvt Ltd. are a few of the businesses he owns.
Mishra has a hangar there and has a hired plane, according to Prasanna Pradhan, director of the Biju Patnaik Airport in Bhubaneswar.
Allegations Increase
While his firm expanded, Mishra was the subject of numerous criminal accusations. He was being looked into as a key suspect in the kidnapping of Pratap Chandra Das, the manager of the stevedoring and logistics firm JM Baxi, who was allegedly taken from a hotel in Paradip on July 13, 1995. Despite CID’s investigation, the case was closed in 1996 without Mishra being found guilty.
Mishra and Basant Bal were charged with killing Bichitrananda Mallick, the vice-president of the Paradip Phosphates Mazdoor Union, in May 1998. Again, the Odisha CID closed the case in 1999 due to a lack of evidence. Mishra was charged with the murder of Arun Bhatt in 2013, allegedly because Bhatt had refused to give him the land he wanted to buy. Bombs were dropped on Bhatt, who was then shot dead in Cuttack. The lawsuit is currently in court, and Mishra’s attorney has stated that he had nothing to do with the occurrence.
Mishra did not serve any jail time in any of these three incidents. According to CID personnel who spoke to HT, there was no concrete evidence against Mishra, and it was challenging to make an arrest of a man with Mishra’s power based solely on circumstantial evidence.
He was referred to as a “mafia don” in 2016 by the trade group Company of Master Mariners of India because he has long held a monopoly over the bulk vessel handling and stevedoring in Paradip port. Captain Harjit Singh, then CEO of the Company of Master Mariners of India, wrote to Union shipping minister Nitin Gadkari in October 2016 saying, “Previously, whenever it seemed that someone was breaking his grasp, he has resorted to shady techniques like kidnapping, setting fire to equipment, etc.
In the same month, Mishra’s name was once again brought up in connection with the alleged murder of Mahendra Swain, a senior executive of Seaways Shipping and Logistics Limited, a competitor shipping firm. Due to rising cargo charges, Jindal Steel and Power Limited terminated its stevedoring contract with Mishra’s OSL in 2015 and gave it to Utkal Stevedores Association, a group of three more businesses that included included Seaways Shipping and Logistics Ltd.
A senior police official who handled the murder investigation stated, “In September 2015, Seaways Shipping quoted a price of 103 per tonne whereas Mishra’s company quoted 143 for import of limestone for Jindal Steel and Power.”
According to the police, Mishra reportedly decided to have Swain killed because he was concerned about his control over the cargo operations at the port and felt threatened by the newcomers.
On October 26, 2016, at around 9.30 am in Paradip, Mahendra Swain was travelling to his office when thugs who Mishra allegedly hired fired at his vehicle and threw bombs at it, killing him. In response to a FIR filed by Swain’s brother, Mishra and his friend Bal were detained in Bangkok in December 2016. In the incident where eight other people were detained, he was imprisoned for about two and a half years. The Orissa high court initially granted him bail in May 2017, but the Supreme Court later overturned the decision, noting that Mishra was a powerful figure with both financial and physical clout, and ordered that he be placed in detention.
In November 2019, the high court ultimately granted Mishra bail in the case, according to Subhalaxmi Pujari, inspector of the Paradip port police station where the murder case was reported.
‘No proof,’
All of the accusations against Mishra, according to his attorney Joydeep Pal, who is also representing his son Charchit Mishra in the CBI case, are unfounded. “Over the past few decades, OSL’s stevedoring operations were conducted fairly. There is no proof against him, not even in the 2016 case where he was alleged to have planned the murder of a logistics company manager. His son appears to have also been implicated in the bribery investigation, according to Pal.
Mahima Mishra and his son were contacted by HT by phone and message, but no response was received.
PL Haranadh, the chairman of the Paradip Port Authority, declined to comment on the CBI probe, stating that the case is still under investigation. A thorough query regarding the bribery case given by HT was not answered by CBI agents.
Mishra’s company, however, saw some of its influence in Paradip decline as a result of the 2016 murder case.
The management committee of stevedores at the port, which included Mishra’s, only had nine members prior to 2016.
“Until 2016, this body was in charge of the port’s labour force. The majority of registered stevedores were unable to use pool labour without the management committee’s approval. As a result, a small number of stevedores gained control over all aspects of commerce at Paradip Port. These stevedores also controlled all auxiliary tasks like the provision of equipment, the hiring of dumpers for transportation, and the provision of labour. His word is no longer taken seriously after the Mahendra Swain murder case in 2016 led to the abolishment of this system and the adoption of a more democratic method for choosing stevedoring agents. Mishra’s stevedoring firm has suffered as a result of his absence from work due to legal matters for more than three years, according to a port official.
The CBI inquiry has presented Mahima Mishra with a new obstacle that could derail his impressive ascent.
Prasanta Patnaik