The Commissionerate police have drawn a lot of flak for the recent death of a teenage boy of the Salia Sahi slum under the Nayapalli police station.
Eshak (14), son of Pabitra Digal who is slum dweller of Salia Sahi, died at the SCB Medical College Hospital in Cuttack where he was undergoing treatment after being shifted from the Capital Hospital following an accident with a bike in Bhubaneswar on June 5 while he was returning home from the Nicco Park, where he had gone along with two friends to do a catering job.
However, when he did not return home in the night, his father went to the Nayapally PS to register a ‘missing’ complaint. But the police did not accept it even after repeated requests. After the father informed the DCP, the police registered a complaint but did not search for the boy.
Pabitra came to know about his son’s death after 10 days of frantic search. After being informed by a local businessman, Pabitra found Eshak’s bicycle in front of a shop at Behera Sahi. He came to know that a biker had hit his son’s cycle there. The boy had sustained serious injuries on his head. After getting information from locals about the incident, the PCR van rescued Eshak and rushed him to the Capital Hospital.
After his condition deteriorated, Eshak was shifted to SCB Hospital in Cuttack. Pabitra came to know that Eshak died on June 6 at the SCB Hospital due to bleeding. As per the rule, his son’s body was kept there for three days. As nobody came to claim the body, police consigned it to flames after autopsy.
Ironically, the Commissionerate police who have the punch line, “We Care, We Dare,” neither informed his family about the accident nor about his admission in hospital. After the death, without making any investigation or trying to trace his family and relatives, the body was cremated by police considering it an unidentified body.
Reacting to the incident, hundreds of irate locals of Salia Sahi gheraoed the Nayapalli police station on Saturday for negligence of police including PCR van staffs, the Capital Hospital police outpost and the Cuttack SCB Hospital outpost and demanded a high-level probe into the whole episode and stringent action against the police personnel involved for such dereliction of their duty.