Suspended Orissa top cop BB Mohanty’s hide-and-seek game with the Rajasthan police seems to be at last over.
BB Mohanty is accused of helping his son, convicted for raping a German tourist, jump bail
NEW DELHI: Suspended Orissa top cop BB Mohanty’s hide-and-seek game with the Rajasthan police seems to be at last over. Mohanty, declared a “proclaimed absconder”, assured the Supreme Court through his lawyer on Thursday that he will surrender before a trial court in Rajasthan within two weeks.
Mohanty, Orissa director-general of police (Home Guards) till he was suspended last year, is accused of shielding his son Biti, an MBA student from Delhi, who had jumped bail after being awarded a seven-year jail term for raping a German tourist.
The officer had stood surety for his son’s return to jail after the completion of parole, but Biti never returned to confinement. Ever since the Rajasthan police went to Orissa to look for the father in May last year, he has been missing. After much public outcry, the Orissa government suspended him, refuting the charge that it was shielding a rape convict’s father.
The court had convicted and sentenced Biti for repeatedly raping the German woman for two weeks. He is still wanted by the police to complete the sentence. Mohanty’s petition challenging a Rajasthan high court order directing him to surrender before the trial court is pending before the Supreme Court for some months.
On Thursday, when justices CK Thakker and DK Jain took up Mohanty’s plea and indicated their inclination to reject it, his lawyer gave an undertaking that he would surrender before the Rajasthan court. The father sought directions to the trial court to consider and dispose of his bail application immediately, a plea rejected by the apex court.
Earlier, Rajasthan’s additional advocate-general Aruneshwar Gupta had charged the Orissa government with “shielding” Mohanty and helping him stay “underground” despite a court warrant against him. Gupta argued that the police party is under legal obligation to execute the orders passed by the Alwar court, which had ordered a seven-year jail term to Biti.
b_rakesh@dnaindia.net
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