Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) in yet another incident has found police officials torturing poor and hapless citizens by misusing power. Recently, the OHRC has directed the state Home department and DGP police to pay Rs 1.50 lakh compensation to the relatives of a youth of Rayagada district who was killed in fake encounter case in 2016.
The OHRC, while hearing a plea filed by one Minakshi Pattnaik, directed the state government to pay within two months Rs 2 lakh as compensation to the husband of the complainant for illegal detention and harassment by the cops of Aska police station in 2013.
According to sources, the police officials allegedly at the behest of Bhuban Bahadur and his family harassed Pattnaik’s family and illegally picked up her husband Purna Chandra from his house May 27, 2013 midnight. He was released after the intervention of the villagers the next day.
The commission found that the police officials, the then SI, Rajib Kumar Behera, falsely implicated Purna in a bike theft case. The complainant’s family was harassed by police when they sought their money back from Bahadur family who had taken Rs 1.10 lakh on the promise of providing job to Pattnaik’s daughter in the Railways.
The commission also held IIC of Aska police station Bichitrananda Samal guilty of not taking any remedial action despite knowing all the details in the case.
Samal was also warned by the OHRC for denying any knowledge about the incident as his plea was proved wrong from the records of station diary. He was asked not to submit false statements in future.
The rights body also directed the Odisha DGP to immediately repair the CCTV cameras lying defunct at various police stations of the state. The OHRC warned that if the IIC’s found neglecting in repairing the defunct CCTV cameras at earliest, they will be held guilty for any human rights abuse charges.
