Bhubaneswar, May 22: The city police’s promise to provide security and assurance to senior citizens remains mere words as three senior citizens had to go through 12 hours of ordeal at the Badagada police station on Sunday. Without any care, they had to spend half a day on a bench at the police station.
According to Bharat Chandra Patra (70) of Hansapal village, one of his relatives named Birabhadra Sahu (75) of VSS Nagar had asked him to visit a plot of land near Sai Temple on Tankapani road. Sahu had apparently heard that construction work was being carried out on that plot.
Patra reached the spot at 10.30am yesterday, with his son, Bijan. He said Sahu had sold the land to a woman in 1988 while another plot beside it was sold to another person 20 years later in 2008.
However, the second person had recently started construction work on the woman’s land. Peeved at this, the woman had lodged a complaint against Sahu at the Badagada police station alleging that he had sold the same land twice.
“On reaching the spot, we saw construction work was indeed going on there and when we were leaving the place, the masons working there stopped us and took away the keys of our motorcycle. After that, they called the police,” said Patra. A police control room (PCR) van soon reached the spot and took the father son duo to the Badagada police station.
“Sahu just wanted to check through us whether the work was really going on or not. But, we were taken to police station,” said Bijan.
He said the police had asked them to call Sahu, the original owner of the land, who reached the police station with wife, Parvati (70).
The four of them alleged that the police, instead of trying to solve the matter, verbally abused them.
“I was terrified with this kind of attitude of the police. I had never faced such a situation in my life,” said Parvati.
Police, however, maintained that they had not misbehaved with any of them. “We had not even asked them to wait at the police station. Both parties were sorting out their problems and the police had nothing to do with it,” said inspector-in-charge of Badagada police station Rajat Ray.
