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Odisha rights commission asks cop to pay ₹5 lakh for filing false case
The Commission chairperson Justice BP Das and member Asim Amitabh Dash in their order said continuance of the police official was detrimental to the interest of general public as well as threat to common citizens.
Nearly four years after two youths were arrested on trumped up charges of murdering a 19-year-old in Bargarh district, the Odisha Human Rights Commission asked the investigating police official to pay ₹2.5 lakh compensation to each of the youths for misutilisation of his power that led to the two remaining in jail for about eight months.
The Commission chairperson Justice BP Das and member Asim Amitabh Dash in their order said continuance of the police official was detrimental to the interest of general public as well as threat to common citizens.
“Fairness and effectiveness in policing is important to anyone concerned about police work, police supervisors, policy makers and administrators. Yet we find a decorated police officer is lacking in these qualities. The officer brought immense embarrassment to the police organisation by forcing two persons to confess to a crime that they had not committed,” the OHRC said, asking the investigating official Prakash Kumar Karna to pay ₹2.5 lakh each to Halu Gurla (26) and Raghab Naik (26), the two who were arrested in the case.
During the 2019 Independence Day, Karna was awarded President’s Police Medal for gallantry.
Jitu Dandasena, a 19-year-old youth of Piplipali village under Paikmal Police station of Bargarh district had gone missing from his home on December 7, 2016. An FIR was lodged by the man’s father on December 25. Paikmal police station inspector Prakash Kumar Karna who investigated the case arrested two men - Halu Gurla and Raghab Naik - in June 2017 on charges of murdering the boy and destruction of evidence though he could not find the body.
The police official then filed a chargesheet in the local court on the basis of statement of the two accused under section 164 of CrPC, extra-judicial confession and identification of the spot in front of witnesses. The investigating police officer then got the two accused to confess that they had killed the youth and buried the body in the riverbed.
However, the body could not be recovered.
But Dandsena, who was allegedly murdered by the two youths, reappeared in a dramatic fashion at his home in May 2018. He revealed he was attacked by the two youths on December 7, 2016 and had become unconscious in the attack. He told his family that after gaining consciousness, he went to New Delhi where he worked in a catering firm instead of returning back home. He then shifted to Kolkata and started working in a band party. There he met an ice-cream seller who telephoned his family members about him.
The youths then approached the OHRC complaining about the lackadaisical attitude of the police in investigating the case that violated their human rights.
While castigating Karna for his lack of professionalism by turning a missing persons case to one of murder before recovery of the body, the OHRC said he might have used extra-judicial methods to get confessions out of the accused. “Extraction of a confession self-implicating a person in an offence which he has not committed shows the amount of pressure, may be physical or psychological, undergone by the victims and looking at the conduct of the investigating official, we do not rule out the extraction of confessional statement by means of physical assault and use of force during police custody. Otherwise, a person cannot self-implicate himself in a case where in trial, it may take him to the gallows,” the human rights panel said. Karna is now working as inspector in Kuchinda police station of Sambalpur district.
The panel also took exception to the way the sub divisional police officer, the supervisory officer of the case, handled the whole thing. But it did not impose any penalty as he had retired from service.
