In mid-October, the police arrested Dr Randall Sequeira and charged him with serious criminal offences, including attempt to murder and rioting, for his role in instigating violence in the name of an ‘anti-mining campaign’ in Rayagada district of Odisha. This is not the only time he has spat poison against the government and instigated violence.
Sequeira has been arrested and charged with serious criminal offences, including attempt to murder and rioting, for his role in instigating violence in the name of an ‘anti-mining campaign’ in Rayagada district of Odisha.
The Police have rejected claims that the arrest is part of a crackdown on dissent, stating that Randall Sequeira was actively inciting tribals against the state government.
Police also arrested another man, Laxman Naik, from Sequeira’s residence in Bhawanipatna, Kalahandi district, on the night of 16 October 2026. Both are now in judicial custody. The arrests relate to a violent clash between tribals and police in Kantamal village in April 2026, during a protest against the construction of an approach road to the Sijimali bauxite reserve.
According to police, the two men were not named in the original FIR registered in connection with the clash, which left people on both sides injured, but their involvement was established during the subsequent investigation.
DIG Singh said, “The arrested persons were not innocent“. Dr Randall Sequeira was not providing medical services to the people but was engaged in instigating tribals against the State government. Naik was also misleading people. Why do police arrest any innocent person, especially a doctor?”
The officer added that while many doctors work in the Kalahandi and Rayagada districts, no one else has been arrested, and that those claiming Sequeira’s innocence should examine whether he was actually treating patients or instigating them. Police have also cited pending cases against him, including that he instigated tribal women to make false allegations against the state government.
Randall Sequeira is a 39-year-old is a doctor who grew up in Mumbai. He completed his MBBS at St. John’s Medical College, Bengaluru, and an MD in internal medicine at Sawai Man Singh Medical College and Hospital, Rajasthan.
Randall Sequeira and his connection with Harsh Mandar and the Karwan-e-Mohabbat
Sequeira’s arrest did not occur in a vacuum. He has a connection with Karwan-e-Mohabbat, which was founded by Harsh Mandar in 2017. The group was heavily involved in mobilising support for the Shaheen Bagh protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. In a Substack post titled “The Humanitarian Crisis in Manipur – a report by Karwan-e-Mohabbat”. It is mentioned that he was a member of their team that produced this venomous report against the Manipuri government and Hindus.
Karwan-e-Mohabbat’s Manipur report is a textbook example of anti-Hindu, anti-Meitei bias masquerading as humanitarian concern. Their 2023 report paints the predominantly Hindu Meitei community as the aggressor and the state government as a partisan enabler, while giving the predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo side a virtual clean chit. The report’s central claim is that the government was “culpably absent” and showed a “visible disparity” by supporting Meitei camps while Kuki camps relied on churches. It paints the state as a perpetrator.
In a article written in The New Leader by the title “The Inheritors of the land” Sequeira also compared the Indian State to “Pharisees” and “Sadducees, basically Christian terms for Jewish classes who collaborated with the Roman Empire.
The parallel is striking. In Manipur, the Karwan-e-Mohabbat report accused the state government of partisanship and abdication. In Odisha, Sequeira stands accused of instigating tribals to make false allegations against the state government. The same individual who helped craft a narrative delegitimising one state government is, according to police, actively working to subvert another through instigation and falsehood.
Randall Sequeira was barred from entering Rayagada ahead of an anti-mining protest in Sijimali in 2025
Last year, an administrative order was issued to ban Randall Sequeira from entering the Rayagada district prior to a planned protest against mining at Sijimali in Odisha.
While an Orissa High Court ruling did not exempt Sequeira from criminal proceedings, it quashed the ‘exclusion order’.
Unsurprisingly, Sequeira has contributed articles for the Islamo-leftist propaganda portal The Wire.
