... On the 15th [October], armed police and paramilitary personnel began positioning themselves at the main roads leading to villages known to oppose the mining project. Roads were monitored by company-sponsored goons and a few local village youths. They seemed to have a list of names of media persons and political agents whom they should allow into the villages...

Addressing members of the Odisha State Pollution Control Board (OSPCB), district administration, police administration and Vedanta officials, people raised their voices against the ongoing police repression and the criminal role played by company-sponsored goons and agents. They narrated incidents of abuse, beating, forced entry into their houses, theft of cash, and harassment of women and girls both in their houses and in public at the local markets. They asserted that the repression was being carried out by company-sponsored goons at the forefront with the tacit support of the local police and paramilitary personnel. Leaders and community members demanded answers from the government about this state-corporate-police nexus but those organising the public hearing had no answers...