Odisha Custody Assault Case: 4 More Suspended Cops To Undergo Lie-Detector Test

Bhubaneswar: Four more cops suspended in the alleged custody assault of an Army officer and his fiancée at Bharatpur police station in Bhubaneswar are also likely to undergo polygraph test.

The state Crime Branch (CB), which is probing the case, on Thursday moved a court seeking permission to subject sub-inspector (SI) Baisalini Panda, ASI’s Salilamayee Sahoo and Sagarika Rath, and constable Balaram Hansda to lie-detector test at the state forensic science laboratory in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

This came a day after the court of sub divisional judicial magistrate allowed the CB to conduct polygraph, narco-analysis and brain mapping tests on suspended police inspector Dinakrushna Mishra, who allegedly sexually assaulted the 32-year-old woman when she had gone to the station to lodge a road rage complaint.

He will be taken to Gandhinagar on Saturday, sources said.

The CB appealed for a lie-detector test since ascertaining the veracity of the allegations and counter allegations had become difficult in the absence of CCTV cameras at the police station on the night of the incident and lack of independent witnesses.

According to the allegations, the woman and her fiancé were waylaid by some youths on the intervening night of September 14 and 15. When the couple went to the Bharatpur PS to lodge an FIR, the officer was illegally detained and the woman was sexually assaulted before being arrested for creating fracas and assaulting a woman cop.

Following a nation-wide furore over the incident, the inspector of the police station and four others were suspended on September 18.

Besides the CB probe, the Mohan Majhi government has also ordered an inquiry by a retired High Court judge into the woman’s allegations.