Rajasthan Police reach Kannur, seek custody of Bitti Mohanty

A team of police personnel have reached Kannur in North Kerala, seeking custody of Bitti Mohanty who was arrested there on Friday. The Rajasthan police had also helped the Kerala police to close in on Mohanti, ending a seven-year man hunt. He was convicted of raping a fellow student from Germany while on a trip to Alwar in 2006. Mohanty was arrested from the Alwar railway station and was produced in a local court the next day. He was remanded to judicial custody for 15 days. A fast track court then convicted Mohanty of rape in just nine days after the trial began. He was sentenced Mohanty to seven years rigorous imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000. [caption id=“attachment_654404” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  PTI[/caption] However   in November 2006, Mohanty was granted parole for 15 days to leave the central jail in Jaipur to visit his ailing mother. Mohanty had been shifted from the Alwar jail to Jaipur allegedly because he was suffering from depression. RS Chauhan, the then Director General of Prisons had used his discretion and issued parole on November 20 and Mohanty’s father had stood surety for his son. However,  soon after his father sent applications to the Jaipur jail authorities seeking more time for his son to stay out on parole to receive treatment for depression and other mental ailments. Police officials who went to the address given in his application, that of a IAS official, discovered he wasn’t there and despite his father’s claims that he was absconding, on the scheduled date of 4 December, 2006 Mohanty failed to turn up. Mohanty’s father had claimed that his son had died or must have committed suicide. “I suspect that he is dead. Otherwise no son could have stayed hiding when his father and his family is going through such an agony,”  BB Mohanty said. Mohanty was arrested last week posing as a probationary officer in State Bank of Travancore, the leading public sector bank in the state, with a totally new identity. According to the bank, he had documents to support his claim that he was Raghav Raj from Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh. Mohanty had reportedly been a resident of Kannur for several years and allegedly even obtained an MBA degree from a local college in Kannur. During the last two weeks, Mohanty was reportedly staying with a colleague from Bihar. The Kerala police took him into custody after throwing a net around him so that he couldn’t escape. His capture was based on an anonymous letter which the bank received a few days ago. Apparently, Mohanty had gotten wind of the suspicion among his colleagues following the letter and was about to leave Kannur when the police closed in. Journalists in Kannur said that he looked totally different from the photos that had appeared in newspapers and TV. He looked older, had a completely different hairdo, had grown a moustache and long side-burns.