March 9: Kerala police today arrested a man who they strongly suspect is Bitti Mohanty, the absconding rape convict and son of former Odisha IPS officer B.B. Mohanty.
The man suspected to be Bitti was arrested from Kannur district in northern Kerala where he was working with a public sector bank since June 2012.
Bitti, who was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in April 2006, has been missing since December 4 of that year, when he jumped parole from Jaipur central jail after being convicted for the rape of a German national in a hotel room in Alwar, Rajasthan.
Bitti, then pursuing an MBA degree in Delhi, had accompanied the victim, a research scholar, to Rajasthan and had allegedly raped her. The victim had alerted her friend in Delhi, who in turn had informed the external affairs ministry about the incident. Bitti, who was 25 then, was arrested from a train while returning to Delhi.
The person arrested in Kerala, police say, was employed as a probationary officer with State Bank of Travancore in Madayi, a rural outpost in the north Kerala district, under the name Raghav Rajan hailing from Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh. He has been working with SBT from June 2012.
The exam for probationary officers in banks can be taken till the age of 30.
Notwithstanding the arrest, the Kerala police were waiting for a final word from their counterparts in Rajasthan (where Bitti was convicted and sentenced) before issuing any official statement on the arrested man’s identity.
A Rajasthan police team will leave for Kannur to take custody of the man suspected to be Bitti. Jaipur police commissioner B.L. Soni told The Telegraph: “Kerala police informed us about his arrest and have ascertained his identity as Bitti Mohanty. Once our officers reach there with the relevant case files and documents concerned, we will again reconfirm his identity.”
But Soni did not explain on what basis the arrested man’s identity has been “ascertained” to be that of Bitti.
What makes it tricky for the cops is that the arrested man has a passport, voters’ ID card and an MBA degree from a college under the Kannur University — all in the name of Raghav Ranjan. Sources, however, said identification of body marks on the basis of his prison records had “established that he was Bitti”.
The man calling himself Raghav Rajan was picked up yesterday night, hours before he was allegedly preparing to flee, possibly after being alerted about suspicions doing the rounds about his identity.
The arrest followed a complaint received from the bank conveying its doubts about the identity of its employee. The bank’s complaint was in turn triggered by an anonymous letter to its deputy general manager, which claimed that Bitti was impersonating as Rajan. The man was produced before a magistrate court this evening and remanded to judicial custody.
“He joined the bank in June 2012 after clearing the exam and interview conducted by the SBI Central Recruitment Board. Three days ago, we received an anonymous complaint which said he was, in fact, Bitti. Initially we did some preliminary checks on our own with photos available on the web. We also cross-checked with the two references cited in his resume. It strengthened our doubts and we met the state (Kerala) DGP day before yesterday and lodged a complaint,” bank PRO Ranji Thomas said.
If the arrested man is indeed Bitti, it raises questions about how he managed to secure a passport and voters ID card under a false identity and used it to gain entry to the banking services. “Securing a passport or voters ID in a false name is not easy and could not have happened without contacts in the right places,” said an official.
Bank PRO Thomas said a police verification is carried out but that is a time-consuming process. “It is practically impossible to cross-check every identification document submitted by the hundreds of candidates. The standard operating procedure is that once they clear the exam and interview, the records are sent for police verification. But even that takes a year or more and it’s not possible to keep the candidates waiting till then. So they are allowed to join and if any fraud is detected, their services are discontinued.”
Investigators are also wondering how the arrested man, if he is Bitti, successfully hid his identity and cleared the two-year MBA course living in Kannur all along. “The Bank PO test and interview are not easy and he must have been quite intelligent to clear it,'' an official said.
The verdict in Bitti’s case by a fast track court in Rajasthan was quick. He was charged with rape on March 21, 2006, and the conviction took place on April 12. On November 20, 2006, he was released from Jaipur central jail in Rajasthan on 15-day parole to see his ailing mother in Cuttack but never returned.
The family members of Bitti, who are in Bhubaneswar, clammed up after news of the arrest in Kannur became public. While his father BB Mohanty was unreachable since morning, even relatives were not willing to speak.
The twists and turns in Bitti’s fate had a direct impact on the career of his father, a 1972 batch IPS officer, who retired in 2010 as director-general of police (fire services) though he could easily have reached the top of the state police hierarchy. Known as an upright police officer, BB Mohanty was put under suspension in August 2007 after a Rajasthan court issued a non-bailable warrant against him in connection with Bitti’s parole jumping case. Though the suspension was finally revoked on May 13, 2009, the damage was done.
