Odisha Custody Assault Case: Suspended Cops Move HC For Anticipatory Bail

Bhubaneswar: The five suspended police officers, who are in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar for polygraph test in connection with the alleged custody assault, have moved Orissa High Court for anticipatory bail, sources said on Monday.

Former police inspector Dinakrushna Mishra and four of his colleagues – sub-inspector (SI) Baisalini Panda, ASIs Salilamayee Sahoo and Sagarika Rath, and constable Balaram Hansda – are accused of ‘manhandling’ an Army officer and ‘sexual assaulting’ his fiancée at Bharatpur police station in Odisha capital on the intervening night of September 14-15 when they gone to lodge a road rage complaint.

Besides ordering a Crime Branch (CB) probe into the incident, Odisha DGP Y B Khurania had suspended the five on September 18 amid outrage over the alleged police brutality.

According to the allegations, the woman and her fiancé were waylaid by some youths on the intervening night of September 14 and 15. When the couple went to the Bharatpur police station to lodge an FIR, the officer was illegally detained and the woman was sexually assaulted before being arrested for creating fracas and assaulting a woman cop.

The CB appealed for a lie-detector test since determining the veracity of the allegations and counter allegations had become difficult in the absence of CCTV cameras at the police station on the night of the incident and lack of independent witnesses.

The Mohan Majhi government has also ordered an inquiry by a retired High Court judge into the woman’s allegations.