Custody Death: 32 Years After Conviction & Bail, Two Odisha Cops Asked To Serve Jail Term

Cuttack: Thirty-two year after their conviction in a custodial death case and being granted bail on criminal appeals, two former police officers have been asked to surrender and serve imprisonment by the Orissa High Court.

The case pertains to 1985 custody death of a person during illegal confinement at Purighat police station in Cuttack where the two officers – Pravat Chandra Mohanty (76) and P K Choudhary (75) – were then posted as the inspector and senior sub-inspector.

The Single Judge Bench of Justice SK Sahoo on Monday acquitted the septuagenarian officers of the charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and reduced their jail term to one year of simple imprisonment for other charges considering their age.

The HC asked them to surrender before the trial court within two weeks and undergo the remaining period of sentence.

Mohanty and Choudhary were sentenced to five and eight years of rigorous imprisonment respectively for culpable homicide not amounting to murder in 1988 by the Assistant Sessions Judge-cum-Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate ( Special), Cuttack. They also had to undergo a maximum of three years of rigorous imprisonment for fraudulent preparation of FIR, wrongful confinement and voluntarily causing hurt. The duo had filed criminal appeals in the HC and was released on bail in September in the same year.