New Delhi: On 19 September, a 32-year-old Bhubaneswar-based lawyer narrated a chilling account of alleged custodial abuse and sexual assault at the hands of Bharatpur police personnel, while seated in a wheelchair outside the city’s AIIMS hospital.
Wearing a neck brace and a sling to support her left arm, she explained the sequence of events in vivid detail, crying uncontrollably as she spoke, surrounded by media persons and photographers.
While speaking to ThePrint from her hospital bed, she recounted how she and her fiancé, a captain in the Indian Army, went to report an incident of road rage at the Bharatpur police on the intervening night of 14-15 September, only to be thrown in jail themselves. She recalled being kicked on her breasts, tied up, beaten, stripped. A policeman even exposed his genitals and asked “how many times she would like to take it to shut up”, she said.
She underwent treatment for a dislocated jaw, a hip injury, and other trauma, and is now recovering at home.
In the days after she went public with her allegations, several video clips, purportedly of that night, surfaced on social media. While one of them pertains to an altercation between the couple and several men on the street, another, which looks like CCTV footage, apparently shows the woman drinking and dancing at a pub. Other clips were taken later at Bharatpur police station, where the couple went to lodge their complaint. ThePrint has not independently verified the authenticity of the videos.
The woman’s father, a retired brigadier rank Army officer, told ThePrint: “It is a smear campaign against my daughter. These videos were leaked to character-assassinate her and to build a different narrative. Now there is a judicial enquiry that has been ordered. Those leaking these videos from that night are answerable now. Everyone who is a part of this will be held accountable.”
The videos, some of which show the woman using derogatory language and taunting the police personnel on duty, are being used to build a narrative against the lawyer on social media even as the police investigate serious allegations of sexual assault, custodial torture and illegal detention by the police. They have also sparked a series of claims and counterclaims about what unfolded on the intervening night of 14-15 September, fuelling a raging debate between Army veterans and retired police personnel, who are at loggerheads over the incident.
According to police sources, the woman was arrested on 15 September after an FIR was lodged against her, and after she underwent a medical check-up at a local hospital.
She has been booked under sections 126(2) (wrongful restraint), 115(2) (voluntarily causing hurt), 296 (obscene acts), 74 (assault or use of criminal force against women with intent or likelihood of outraging their modesty), 132 (assaulting or using criminal force against a public servant), 351(3) (criminal intimidation particularly grave threats), and 3(5) (common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
A local court then sent her to judicial custody. On 17 September, she was admitted to AIIMS Bhubaneswar, and a day later, she was granted bail by the Orissa High Court, after spending two nights in judicial custody.
The seven men against whom the lawyer had gone to Bharatpur police station to file a complaint, were arrested Saturday, two days after she went public with her allegations. They were granted bail the same day.
Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi has ordered a judicial inquiry. According to a release from the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), retired Calcutta High Court judge Chitta Ranjan Dash will preside over the inquiry, and is expected to submit a report within 60 days. Five officers have been suspended — inspector in-charge (IIC) Dinakrushna Mishra, Sub-Inspector Baisalini Panda, assistant sub-inspectors Salilamayee Sahoo and Sagarika Rath, and Constable Balaram Handa.
No arrests have been made so far in the custodial torture case.
ThePrint digs deep into the aftermath of an incident that has made national headlines:
Also Read: Politicisation of rape in India has been long overdue. In fact, it’s a good thing
‘Don’t show overconfidence’
In one of the video clips that have surfaced, the woman is seen surrounded by a group of men, who have, according to police, claimed they stopped her car after she made an obscene gesture at them. In one of them, she is seen confronting the men, saying it is up to her whether she bares a leg or her hair.
One of the men is heard in the video saying: “Yeh Dilli nahi hai.” Another cries, “Victim card!”. Another says, “Don’t show overconfidence.” As the woman walks up closer to the men as she addresses them, another is heard telling her fiancé: “Bhai samjha de bhai (Brother, explain it to her).” The clip then shows the woman being pushed around by the men.
The seven men arrested for allegedly assaulting the lawyer and her fiancé claimed during interrogation that the two parties were trying to overtake one another in their cars that night, which resulted in a spat, according to sources in the Odisha Police.
The men in their statement also said the couple were intoxicated, police sources further said, adding that the two had consumed alcohol a pub before that, bills for which have been collected as evidence. Some of the men involved in the altercation were also inebriated, they further said.
“At around 1 am, the couple were driving back and the seven men in three cars were behind them. Chasing and overtaking ensued and the captain also overtook the cars twice. The second time the Army officer overtook their car, the woman showed the middle finger to the men, after which the other men sped up, overtook the couple’s car and asked them to stop. Both the captain and his fiancée stepped out of the car, and a spat ensued,” a police source told ThePrint.
Some of the men had noticed Army signage on the couple’s car and then told the others to back off, but they pushed the woman and her partner, even as the captain tried to pull her away, the source added.
The woman’s father has said that the police have tutored the men. “The police tutored the men who had misbehaved to say that they (the couple) were intoxicated and she showed them the middle finger and started misbehaving with them. All of this is false. The men in those three cars surrounded them and stopped them. They were miscreants. The police made a weak case against them to protect themselves in the assault case and they got bail the same day.”
The police have also said that at the hospital, the woman and her fiancé refused to get medical tests done. “We wanted to check the level of alcohol in their blood, but they refused,” said a police source.
The woman’s father however, refuted this. “The police could have asked them to take the breathalyzer. Moreover, they never refused a medical test. The police tried to manipulate her medical results that showed injuries and failed, so now they have resorted to leaking videos and making false claims,” he told ThePrint.
He added: “There were no CCTV cameras at the police station and the new IIC has done some puja there which means they have contaminated the crime scene.”
The police station didn’t have CCTV because it had just shifted to the building, sources in the Odisha police said.
The road rage incident registered on the basis of the Army captain’s complaint is being probed by the Chandaka police.
Also Read: Rape isn’t just a Bengal problem. It’s a wake-up call for police, courts and schools
What happened at the station
In a video purportedly taken at the Bharatpur police station, the woman is seen getting agitated with the police for their delayed response to her complaint. She is seen telling the individual taking the video to do their work instead of recording her.
Another video shows her banging on a door at the police station. A separate clip shows her saying to a policeman: “You will get nothing from making this recording.”
The woman in her account said that upon reaching the police station, she and her fiancé found that there were limited staff. She then asked a female officer on duty to file her complaint, but said the latter took it casually.
She also alleged that as the matter got heated, two male officers began stripping her fiancé of his belongings and dragged him into a cell, at which point she started screaming for help and told them their actions were illegal.
According to the woman’s father, the captain was illegally locked up in a cell by police all night, and was only released from custody at around 11 pm on 15 September after the Army’s intervention. However, the police have denied the same, saying the Army captain was issued a challan and asked to leave, but he chose to stay, while the woman was arrested and produced in court.
“He was never kept in the police station till 11 pm, as claimed by many Army officers. The captain didn’t want to leave because we had arrested the woman and she was produced before the court,” said a source in the Odisha police.
Police say that when the woman asked the personnel on duty to act by sending a patrol car to nab the men, she was asked to write down her complaint.
“The assistant sub-inspector was in a nightgown and the woman started shouting at her for not being in a police uniform. The ASI went inside and changed. The couple were aggrieved about what had happened and wanted a patrol car to be sent after the men. However, the ASI told them to write a complaint instead and an argument started between them,” a police officer said.
The woman had earlier told ThePrint that she became agitated with the officer’s casual tone and that she wasn’t listening to them.
According to the sources, the police station was lightly staffed as 16 September was the rehearsal day for a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi scheduled for the next day.
Police sources said the woman started filming the police personnel at the station as the latter filmed her as well. At that time, the ASI also called the patrol vehicle, they alleged.
“When the sub-inspector arrived, the woman started misbehaving with her…,” said a second police officer ThePrint spoke to.
It was then that things heated up further between the couple and the police personnel, according to sources. The woman was then restrained and the captain was put into a cell. The police alleged that while she was being restrained, the woman bit the female officers.
The woman told ThePrint three female personnel pinned her down and pulled her hair, as she struggled to escape. She said that one of them came forward and held her neck in a bid to choke her and to escape her grip, she bit the officer’s hand.
“She yelled and two more male officers came in and they stood on my hands and feet. They removed my top and tied my hands. One female officer tied my feet with her scarf and they dragged me into a room and threw me on the floor. I was screaming throughout,” she had told ThePrint earlier.
It was around 6 am when three women officers and the inspector in-charge entered the room, the woman said. She alleged that he, along with other male officers, kicked and stomped on her face, dislocating her jaw. She further alleged she was disrobed after this and that the IIC flashed her.
The police, however, said that the woman started verbally abusing the IIC when he went inside the cell to check on her.
“We are investigating if the woman was sexually assaulted,” the officer added.
The Odisha Police Crime Branch is investigating the case of custodial torture lodged against several personnel of Bharatpur police station, including inspector in-charge (IIC) Dinakrushna Mishra, who has been accused by the woman of flashing her while she was bound down in a room.
Pub CCTV
On Monday, former CBI director M. Nageswara Rao shared a video purportedly showing the woman drinking and dancing at a pub, through his X account. The video even displays a bill, purportedly showing what the couple consumed at the pub.
The lengthy post, which has been shared over 500 times, says: “Here is a video clip for you to make your own judgement about the Army officer and his ‘lady’ fiancée?”
The woman’s father, while speaking to ThePrint, said this video was leaked as “an afterthought by the police”.
“Is consuming alcohol and dancing a crime? They want to save themselves now since everything is out in the media — how they beat her up and detained her and the Captain,” the retired Army officer said.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
Also read:7 women lured using ‘Magic App’ & raped — police in MP’s Sidhi uncover racket, arrest 4