The possibility of handing over the case pertaining to forgery and impersonation by Bittihotra Mohanty alias Bitti from Odisha, the rape convict who was arrested recently from Kannur, to the CBI has become clearer after the rejection of the Kerala Police’s plea for getting him in their custody for a second time by a Kannur court.
Bitti, son of former Odisha DGP BB Mohanty, was arrested by the Kerala Police on March 8 over six years after he jumped parole in November, 2006 while serving a seven-year term at a prison in Alwar, Rajasthan for raping a German woman earlier that year. He was arrested while he was impersonating as one Raghav Rajan of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh.
The authorities in the State are thinking of leaving the case to the CBI in the context of the necessity of probing the affair simultaneously in four states – Kerala, Rajasthan, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. The Kerala Police have charged Bitti, arrested while he was working with a public sector bank under Raghav Rajan’s identity, with impersonation, forgery and cheating.
The First Class magistrate Court in Payyannur, Kannur had last week rejected a Kerala Police plea for getting Bitty in their custody for a second term of ten days for more investigations and questioning. The court pointed out that the police had been unable to utilize the ten-day period between March 11 and 20 for which he was left in their custody.
The police had taken Bitti for investigations and evidence-gathering – mainly to establish that he was indeed Bitti and not Raghav Rajan as he persistently claimed – to the Alwar prison in Rajasthan but they had not been able to take him to his home state Odisha or to Puttaparthi. It was for this the police had requested the court for his custody for a second ten-day period.
“The Kerala Police will not be able to take Bitti to Odisha or Andhra Pradesh for evidence-gathering. May be, they can question him at the sub-jail in Kannur where he is lodged. But this possibility also will be lost if the court hands him over to the Rajasthan Police. In this situation, the proposal to leave the case to the CBI seems reasonable,” said a police official.
The State police have collected many documentary evidences from Odisha and Andhra Pradesh to establish that the arrested person is indeed Bitti Mohanty and not Raghav Raj. Mohanty Senior had identified his son from a photograph shown to him. Apart from these evidences, the police have not got any scientific proofs to establish the actual identity of the arrested person.
Sources said that lack of scientific evidences was the biggest obstacle for progress in the probe. That the required scientific evidences had not been collected by the Rajasthan Police after he was arrested for rape has also become a huge problem now. In this context, he has to be subjected to a DNA test but with the court’s rejection of the police’s plea, this has become impossible.
The Rajasthan Police have already put forward a proposal for a CBI probe into the matter. They had arrested Bitti within days of his sexual assault on the 26-year-old German woman. Senior lawyers of the Kerala High Court said that the demand for a CBI probe could be considered relevant in the present circumstances.