The Odisha State Human Rights Commission (OSHRC) has issued notice to the Sundargarh district Collector and the Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) over the unlawful detention of a woman and her one-year daughter in the Forest Range office lockup in the district recently.
Acting on a petition filled by Society Forum on Human Rights activist Akhand, the OSHRC has directed the aforesaid officials to inquire into the matter and submit their reports within four weeks.
Akhand stated the Sundargarh forest officials had raided the house of one Bharat Pradhan on February 23, for his alleged involvement in poaching of wild boar. When they did not find Bharat, instead they took his wife Bharati Pradhan, along with her baby daughter and two other relatives to the Sadar forest range office and locked them up for more than two hours.
He said according to Section 51 of the CrPC, woman can be frisked by only another woman with strict regard to privacy and decency. Here male forest officials raided the house of the accused and forcibly took his wife to the forest range office and detained them unlawfully for more than three hours with her baby girl.
The petitioner also cited a judgment of the SC in the Sheela Barse versus State of Maharashtra, where the apex court held that women suspects must be kept in separate lockups but Bharati was kept in a lockup where other male suspects had been lodged. The petitioner sought the intervention of the commission in the matter.