Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
A team of police officers from Rajsthan is camping in Orissa to arrest its Director general of Police (DGP)(Homeguards) Mr. Bidya Bhusan Mohanty (BBM) under allegation that he has helped his son Bitihotra Mohanty (BM) jump parole. BM was jailed in Rajsthan, convicted for having raped a foreign woman there in a hotel. Rajsthan police alleges that BBM had brought his son on parole and has helped him escape. He stoutly denies this. He had neither brought his son on parole nor has he helped him escape, he states.
The Rajsthan police had tried to obtain an arrest warrant from the appropriate Court in Rajsthan; but the Court, as they admit, denied.
So without a Court warrant, the team has rushed to Orissa and has been trying to arrest the DGP.
It is noticed as well as stressed in local and national print and electronic- media that Rajsthan police is not as interested in recapturing BM as it is intent in arresting BBM. Therefore it is a conundrum.
Before proceeding, let us have a cursory look at BBM.
When the news hit Orissa that Rajsthan police is trying to arrest him, all the family members of persons undergoing imprisonment and formerly in prisons in Orissa were seen visiting temples of their respective Gods to pray for protection to BBM, who, as Inspector General of Prisons had given the first feeling of humanitarianism to the prisoners and given the best possible healing touch to the bruised and brutalized lives of the under trials as well as the convicts. For him, the wrong doers and the wronged, incarcerated in jails of Orissa, had got the first ever assurance that jailors are not there to act as agents of cruelty. It is he who had ushered in reforms to jail administration and ensured that children of the imprisoned get general education at government cost. It is he who had shown that every culprit is first a human being that needs recognition of his human entity and dignity. He is the man whom the prisoners and their families had started looking as their redeemer, as somebody in whom sympathy is personified. This is in nutshell the person whom Rajsthan police has been trying to arrest. Anybody who knows him knows him to be a benevolent, principled person full of humanitarian aptitude and virtues.
A philosopher beneath the Khakee uniform, he is so principled that he had refused to come to rescue of his son, when he was arrested for the alleged rape, maintaining that he was a major and if he had committed the offence, he should be punished or if he has not committed the offence he should defend himself. It is unbelievable therefore that such a person has brought his son on parole and has helped him escape.
BM, too shocked over the turn of event, could not defend himself adequately in the Court and got convicted.
Had his father come to his rescue and engaged an efficient lawyer, the result of the case might have been different.
A foreign woman, absolutely major, accompanies him from Delhi to Rajsthan, stays in the same hotel, shares private moments over drinks in his hotel room and alleges that she was cowed down and raped. She may be right and the offence might have been committed. But with this scenario, as we have watched administration of law and to what extent Ram Jethmalanies in this country play the tricks, it could have been easily proved that it was not a rape but a consented sex. And for consented sex between two majors, law has no punishment.
So, had his father wanted to save his son from law, he could have done that easily when BM was first arrested. But he had preferred administration of law to safety of his son. Such a man, one would seldom believe, has helped his son escape law after having personally brought him home on parole.
Now therefore the question is: why the Rajsthan police are after BBM instead of trying to recapture BM, if at all he has jumped parole?
The question is very perplexing. In a recent interview to a TV channel, BBM was remarkably in deep agony when he said he even didnt know if his son was alive. Not a small outburst of distress was it!
I may be wrong. But can I loudly apprehend that the Rajsthan police have done some such wrong to BM that they have, to evade being exposed, made him unavailable and lest his father demands production of his son, have been trying to shift the reasons of his unavailability to his father by concocting the parole issue?
Nothing is impossible if police play the tricks. And good people, even though in police, become victims of police if tricks are played.
Unless BBM files a case for production of his son, this conundrum will perhaps be more perplexing and deep.
Government of Orissa, despite its innumerable wrongs, is surely right in so far keeping far from accepting the Rajsthan Police as the truth-teller. As the State knows BBM in every details, it will sure be appreciated by every body if this stance is maintained. A brilliant officer of the State should not be abandoned by administration to face his own fate under another States scheming police.