Maharathi, who became minister for the first time in May last year, has hung like an albatross around chief minister Naveen Patnaik's neck over allegations that he sheltered the rape accused. "I resigned to save my party and the image of my chief minister... like Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned after the rail mishap," Maharathi told the ledia after putting in his papers this morning.

Maharathi's resignation was an inevitability as the issue had heated up just ahead of next month's panchayat polls that would determine where Patnaik's political popularity stands after 12 years at the helm.

The 18-year-old Dalit girl of Arjunagoda village in Pipili block of Puri district was allegedly gangraped by some local youths on November 28 last year. After the gangrape, the assailants allegedly tried to strangulate her which left the girl in a state of coma. The girl is still in coma and admitted in the intensive care unit of SCB Medical College and Hospital, Cuttack. Doctors from Bangalore's National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences are also treating her.

Naveen had handed the case to the Criminal Investigation Department, Crime Branch of the Orissa police and three of the four accused have been arrested. He also ordered a parallel judicial probe by a retired High Court judge, but that has not calmed the uproar with students, Opposition parties and women's organisation demanding a CBI probe and Maharathi's resignation. The case had got murkier with the brother of the victim alleging that Maharathi was sheltering the accused.

Naveen Patnaik was left embarrassed after a group of students from the Jawaharlal Nehru University staged a demonstration in front of his Aurangzeb Road residence in New Delhi on January 16. In Bhubaneswar too, Opposition political parties, civil society organisations, human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and writers took out a huge rally under the banner of Odisha Gana Samaja and demanded a CBI probe into the incident.

Two days ago, former Union coal secretary and 1966-batch IAS officer Prasanna Kumar Mishra in an open letter to Naveen Patnaik had demanded the inspector of Pipili police station be dismissed under Article 311(2) (b) as he did not lodge an FIR despite the pleas of the victim's family.