Odisha Crime Branch Mulls Polygraph Test To Unravel Truth In ‘Custody Assault’ Case

Bhubaneswar: To verify the allegations and the counter allegations, the Crime Branch may go for a polygraph of the errant cops of Bharatpur police station accused custodial abuse and the fiancée of Army captain, who has levelled serious allegations of misconduct against them.

The investigating agency has reportedly found no evidence that substantiates the 32-year-old woman restaurateur’s claims of sexual assault in police custody and also the police’s allegations that she attacked Bharatpur police station staff, a senior officer connected to the probe told TOI.

The agency is finding it difficult to establish the truth in the absence of CCTV cameras at the police station and lack of independent witnesses, the report added.

The woman told the media that she was disrobed and kicked on the chest before a police inspector assaulted and made obscene gestures at her when she along with her fiancé, a serving Army officer, went to the police station to lodge a road rage complaint late on September 14. Police, however, dismissed her accusations and instead alleged that she appeared to be intoxicated and misbehaved with female officers instead of filing the complaint. The woman also allegedly refused to undergo a breathalyzer test at the station and at a private hospital where she was taken for a routine medical examination following her arrest on charges of creating fracas and assaulting a woman cop.

Meanwhile, seven engineering students, arrested and later released on bail in the initial road rage complaint, have also denied physically touching the officer’s fiancée. They have instead alleged that the Army officer was driving recklessly and hurled abuses at them as they overtook their vehicle. “The woman made some indecent gestures from the car. We had an argument with the Army officer over the issue. We have been falsely implicated in the case,” one of the arrested student told reporters.

The students have been booked under Sections 126 (2) (wrongful restraint), 115 (2) (voluntarily causing hurt), 117 (2) (voluntarily causing grievous hurt), 296 (obscene acts), and 3(5) (joint criminal liability) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).