Ileana Citaristi

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 21: Police today registered a case and started probe into an alleged case of assault of a 10-year-old girl by Italy-born Odissi dancer and Padmashree recipient Ileana Citaristi.

The girl is a class IV student, who has been attending dance classes at Citaristi’s Odissi institute at Old Town for the past two-and-a-half years. Her father alleged that Citaristi had assaulted his daughter for a minor mistake on Sunday.

“My daughter complained that another student had misbehaved with her 15 days ago for a minor mistake of dance steps. Citaristi was not present that day. But this Sunday, my daughter came to me when I was sitting outside her institute and said Citaristi had assaulted her. When I queried about the matter, she misbehaved with me, too,” said Kamalakanta Das, 37, a resident of Kedar Lane and a yoga expert.

He also alleged that her daughter had suffered from injury in one of her fingers, knee and back.

“As I had earlier told Citaristi about the past incident, she might have assaulted my daughter with a grudge,” said Das. The girl used to attend Citaristi’s dance classes twice a week.

Later, the girl’s father lodged a complaint at Lingaraj police station in this connection. “We have received a complaint from the father of the dance student and registered a case. We are looking into the matter,” said deputy commissioner of police Nitinjeet Singh.

Citaristi, however, denied the charges and said that since the student was insdisciplined, she asked her to leave the class.

“As a teacher, I asked the girl to leave my class since she is very indisciplined. But, her father is creating an issue out of nothing,” she said.

In July last year, Citaristi alleged that two priests of Jagannath temple had manhandled her on the chariot of Lord Jagannath in Puri when she refused to pay them money. The incident had created a controversy regarding allowing foreigners to climb to the chariots during the car festival. Later, Citaristi had withdrawn her complaint against the two priests.