Cuttack, June 10: The judicial inquiry into the Pipili rape and murder case assumed significance when the investigating officer of the CID crime branch told the Justice P.K. Mohanty Commission that he did not probe into the alleged involvement of politicians in the incident.
Deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Ramesh Chandra Sethi, the investigating officer, said he did not investigate the alleged involvement of politicians, despite allegations made in the FIR.
“I did not feel it appropriate to investigate such allegations, the father of the victim and complainant did not speak of the involvement of any political person,” Sethi said during cross-examination by advocate-petitioner Nishikanta Mishra. The officer’s statement assumes significance as BJD leader Pradip Maharathy had resigned as agriculture minister following allegations against him in connection with the case.The victim was recovered in an unconscious state from a paddy field near Arjungoda village in Pipili police station limits on November 29, 2011.
The incident came to light when the Dalit girl was initially denied treatment at a number of hospitals. The case created a political storm and prompting Maharathy to resign on moral grounds on January 19 after the Opposition parties and the woman’s family alleged that he was protecting her attackers.
Many loopholes in the investigation had come to the fore after Sethi fumbled during the cross-examination by Nishikanta Mishra, counsel of victim’s family Akshaya Nanda and counsel of National SC/ST Commission Haladhar Sethy in three sittings. The officer will be cross-examined again tomorrow.
During today’s cross-examination, it was found that the CID crime branch had not examined the first informant of the case, a tractor driver of the locality, who first told the villagers that a girl was lying unconscious in a deserted place near the riverbank.
The DSP also said that he had not visited Ghatikia village even once where the victim was staying after she was denied treatment at Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar.
Furthermore, the crime branch police also did not examine Santosh Kumar Tripathy, who had first received the victim at the Pipili Community Health Centre and J.B. Patnaik to whom Tripathy had referred the patient.
Even names of the two doctors did not appear in any of the charge sheets the crime branch has filed till date.
The crime branch had filed charge sheets against three doctors and two of them were charged with not giving proper attention to the victim and not intimating the nearest police station.
A medico legal case is defined as “any case of injury or ailment where, the attending doctor after history taking and clinical examination considers that investigations by law enforcement agencies are warranted to ascertain circumstances and fix responsibility regarding the said injury or ailment according to the law”.
During treatment at SCB hospital from November 29, 2011 to December 14, 2011, the medical authority did not give proper attention to the victim as a medico legal case and discharged the unconscious girl after fitting a nasal pipe and catheter.
They also did not inform the police about the discharge of a serious patient or victim.
A charge sheet was accordingly filed under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act against D.N. Maharana, the then superintendent of SCB, as he was the head of the treating unit responsible.
