Cuttack/Balasore, March 20: Orissa High Court today rejected former minister Raghunath Mohanty’s petition seeking quashing of the FIR his daughter-in-law Barsa Swony Choudhary had lodged against his family members accusing them of dowry torture and criminal intimidation.

A team of the human rights protection cell of Odisha police, which are probing the case, today visited Mohanty’s ancestral house at Amarda Road, 50km from Balasore, looking for the family members.

A relative of Barsa accompanied the team. There was no one in the house except a cook from whom the team recorded statements. It also recorded the neighbours’ statements. The former law minister’s house in Bhubaneswar, too, was locked.

Deputy superintendent of police Subal Kar, who is heading the team, however, declined to say anything on the issue.

The former minister, his wife, daughter and son-in-law — all wanted in the case — remain untraceable.

A bail petition of the former minister’s son, Raja Shree Mohanty, who has been lodged in Balasore jail, will be heard tomorrow by the sessions court. Raja Shree was sent to judicial custody after the sub-divisional judicial magistrate had rejected his petition.

Assembly Speaker Pradip Amat said he had not received any official information from the state police about the case. As the Assembly is in session, it is the normal practice that the police have to intimate the Assembly secretariat about the charges made against a legislator and its intention to take the legislator into custody.

Pritilata Mohanty, wife of the former minister, is an employee of the Regulated Marketing Committee, a semi-government organisation, his son-in-law, Suvendu Madhual, is a paediatrician with the district hospital.

While rejecting the former minister’s petition, the single-judge bench of Justice Raghubir Dash said he was not inclined to entertain the petition as prima facie alleged facts of the offences were available in the FIR.

Justice Dash reserved judgment on the petition yesterday after Mohanty’s counsel Bijon Ray had sought interim relief in the petition seeking quashing of the FIR and contended that the allegations raised in the FIR did not constitute a case against his client and others.

Government counsel Devasis Panda argued that granting of interim relief on a petition for quashing the FIR would be “tantamount to granting anticipatory bail without looking at the case records”.

“Moreover, how can relief be sought when anticipatory bail applications filed by the petitioner and others (his family members) are pending before the high court,” he asked.