Odisha Human Rights Panel Orders Former DSP Of Vigilance To Pay Rs 5L Compensation For Fake Raid

Bhubaneswar: A former Vigilance officer has been found on the wrong side of the law as the Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) has held him guilty of framing an engineer in a fake bribery case.

The former DSP of Vigilance in Dhenkanal Himanshu Sekhar Mishra had conducted a raid on the office of junior engineer of Kamakhyangar NAC Rajendra Prasad Mishra on March 24, 2017 and arrested him on the charges of taking a bribe of Rs 25,000 from contractor Suresh Nayak, according to a TNIE report.

Rajendra had filed a case with the OHRC the same year demanding an inquiry into the matter and compensation from the Vigilance officer for harassment and damage caused to his reputation. The DIG (Vigilance), Cuttack, who was assigned the case, retrieved the CCTV footage of Rajendra’s office.

The Vigilance team led by Himanshu had claimed that they had raided Rajendra’s office in presence of the contractor who was entrusted with the civil works in the NAC and recovered Rs 25,000 from Rajendra’s office table.

However, the CCTV ffotage revealed that the Vigilance team had found nothing from the engineer’s office. Later, a constable of the team Udhab Lenka had gone to Rajendra’s office room and kept a folder in the drawer of his office table.

After some time, the raiding team again went to Rajendra’s office and found the folder which contained the cash.

The OHRC in its order stated that the raid was ‘stage-managed’ and Himanshu did not follow the standard protocol for the raid. It imposed a penalty of Rs 5 lakh on Himanshu and held the contractor as the main conspirator of the ‘fake’ raid.

The human rights body asked the government to blacklist the contractor and not to assign the two constables of the raiding team any duty which is important in nature. ITt also recommended proceedings against the independent witnesses, peon Hemant Suri and clerk Birakishore Behera of the office of DSWO, Dhenkanal.