The outrage over the arrest of well-known physician Dr Randall Sequeira and leading anti-mining activist Laxman Naik in Kalahandi has spread beyond Odisha, with a Congress MP from Tamil Nadu and a Kerala-based doctor popular on social media condemning what they alleged was state vengeance for serving the voiceless.
Police picked up Naik and Sequeira from Sequeira’s residence at Bhawanipatna in Kalahandi around 10.45pm on October 16 without a warrant or explanation and detained them, activists have claimed.
Both activists have been sent to Rayagada sub-jail.”
“My dear friends, please, I hope to demand your absolute attention to this matter,” wrote Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips, popular on social media as the LiverDoc, on X (formerly Twitter).
He went on to describe his friend, Sequeira.
“In 2018, my junior from St. John’s Medical College, Bengaluru, Dr. Randall Sequeira (middle in the pic), trekked up a steep, bauxite-rich plateau in Odisha to hold a monsoon health camp in the indigenous Kutiya Kondh village of Kutrumali.
“In a piece he wrote then titled "Kutrumali’s Demons," Randall described sleeping under a dripping school roof in freezing fog, borrowing utensils from a local health worker to cook khichdi, and waking up at 6 AM to a line of tribal mothers. He wrote with heartbreak about treating malnourished toddlers with protruding bellies and visible ribs, listening to stories of stillbirths and chronic fevers, while noticing the shiny new solar lights installed by a mining conglomerate eyeing the aluminium ore beneath the villagers' feet.
“Comparing his small medical team to hobbits sheltering in the night, Randall worried about the outside forces coming for that fragile village.
“Randall stayed with the tribal/ adivasi community to serve them. After St. John’s and an MD in Internal Medicine from SMS Jaipur, he gave up every comfort of urban medicine to live in Kalahandi, recognizing that clinical prescriptions are meaningless when indigenous communities are stripped of their forests, water, and dignity.”
He added: “A gentle physician who has spent years trekking up hills to save tribal children is now locked in Rayagada sub-jail under frivolous but draconian charges (attempt to murder, dacoity), simply for standing with Adivasis peaceful protesting the mining of their sacred hills in Sijimali and Kutrumali.”
Philips outlined the case.
“Odisha Govt. said it will cut down forests to connect tribal villages. But it was a way to bypass green laws and fast track London based Vedanta’s, and Adani's mining plans. Local organisations estimate that around 45 villages depend on these hills and would be affected,” he alleged.
“The state has answered with repression rather than dialogue. In the last three years, at least 43 police cases have been filed and over a hundred Adivasis and Dalits, both women and men, have been incarcerated in Odisha jails. For example, from In March and april 2026, 8, 2026, to April 8, 2026, within one month, 24 people were sent to jail, 217 were made accused, and the number of “others” total 1,140. An activist who was not named in the original FIRs, but has since been implicated in about 12 cases, so that bail in one case is followed by arrest in another. This pattern of capture and releases have been used to crush rational dissent.
“Dr. Randall understood that being a good doctor means understanding that prescriptions cannot compensate for the denial of land rights, that surgery cannot undo displacement and that no medical can substitute for the basic infrastructure a government has failed to provide.
“To my fellow medical fraternity, and every citizen with a conscience: a kind physician who embodies the highest ethics of our profession is being criminalized to clear the way for bauxite mining. Please do not let his voice be buried in a sub-jail.
“Amplify this, demand due process, and demand the immediate release,” Philips wrote.
Sasikanth Senthil, IAS officer-turned Congress MP from Tiruvalir, Tamil Nadu, echoed similar sentiments, alleging that Sequeira and Naik were picked up without a warrant.
“Phones seized. Held overnight with no access to lawyers or family. Neither is named in the FIR. Dr Sequeira treats Adivasis in these hills. Laxman Naik is a Dalit leader of the Maa Mati Mali Surakhya Manch,” Senthil wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
“They now face attempt to murder, dacoity and Arms Act charges. Bail refused. Courts are on vacation until 27 October.
“This is Fifth Schedule land. Kondh, Paraja and Dalit families have said no — these hills feed their streams, fields and the Indravati river. The Supreme Court upheld the same principle of gram sabha consent at Niyamgiri in 2013.
“The state’s answer so far: 43 police cases and more than 100 people jailed in three years. Every day these two spend in Rayagada jail is a warning to every village that resists. Defending jal-jangal-jameen is not a crime.”
He demanded Sequeira and Naik be released.