Malkangiri district in Odisha plunged into deeper chaos on Monday as thousands of enraged tribal villagers from Rakhelguda stormed the Bengali settler enclave of MV-26 for the second straight day, unleashing a wave of arson that gutted over 50 houses, destroyed vehicles, and looted shops, forcing hundreds of families to flee in terror despite a massive police presence.

The violence erupted after the gruesome discovery of a headless body identified as 55-year-old Koya tribal widow Lake Podami in the Potteru river on December 4, with villagers accusing Bengali residents of the heinous murder linked to a simmering land dispute. Police have detained Subharanjan Mondal, a 45-year-old from MV-26, for questioning, but this has only fueled the fury of approximately 5,000 tribals armed with traditional weapons like axes, bows, arrows, and spears who marched en masse, ignoring repeated appeals for calm.

With the rampage spiraling out of control even as officers stood by, the district administration invoked Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) to impose an indefinite curfew in the MV-26 area under Korkunda police limits, while ordering a blanket 24-hour suspension of mobile, broadband, and social media services across the entire district starting at 6 PM on Monday to curb the spread of inflammatory rumors and provocative messages that officials blame for escalating the unrest.

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Senior police brass, including Director General of Police YB Khurania, Deputy Inspector General Kanwar Vishal Singh, Superintendent of Police Vinodh Patil, and Collector Somesh Kumar Upadhyay, converged on the site throughout the day to oversee deployments of eight platoons of state police, two platoons of Border Security Force personnel, Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force teams, and fire services units, which rushed to douse the flames engulfing haystacks, homes, and properties in the targeted settlement.

As the death toll remains at zero but injuries mount from the clashes, tribal leader Bandhu Muduli demanded the eviction of undocumented Bengali settlers without government-issued green cards and official recording of disputed lands in the names of indigenous families, while the Malkangiri Bengali Samaj staged a massive protest outside the collector's office, submitting a memorandum alleging an "orchestrated attack" by influential figures and calling for a high-level probe into both the murder and the violence, alongside immediate arrests, compensation, and stringent punishment to restore fragile communal harmony.

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