KANNUR (KERALA), Mar 11:
German woman rape case convict Bitti Mohanty, who was arrested in Kerala, will be first taken to Rajasthan where he jumped parole seven years ago while serving a prison term there after the state police secured his custody today for 10 days.
Police said a Special Investigating Team(SIT) would be tasked with gathering as much evidence as possible to establish the identity of Bitti, who had been living in Kerala as “Raghav Raja” and secured a job in a PSU bank.
First Class Judicial Magistrate of Payyannur, S Smitha, granted the state police plea for Bitti’s custody on the ground he needed to be further interrogated and taken to places of his association in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and native state Odisha for gathering evidence.
According to police sources, Bitti could be first taken to Rajasthan from where he fled while on parole in 2006 while serving the sentence for raping a German woman. Bitti, who jumped parole while serving a seven-year prison term, was arrested in Kannur in north Kerala last week.
The state police formed a 20-member Special Investigation Team to probe details about Bitti during the period between his jumping parole and arrest here last week.
According to Kannur SP Rahul R Nair, the team, headed by DySP K S Sudharshan, would be tasked with gathering as much evidence as possible to establish the identity of Bitti.
The team would be divided into four squads, each comprising five personnel. Three of them would separately go to Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha.
One squad, on the other hand, would entirely focus on Bitti’s life and activities after he came to Kannur, from where he has obtained an MBA degree and got the job as a probationary officer in a public sector bank under the fake name “Raghav Raja.”
A police team from Rajasthan is also on its way here and would make further confirmation of Bitti’s identity. To start with, police from the two states were likely to proceed together to Jaipur as part of the investigation, sources said.
Son of former Odisha DGP B B Mohanty, Bitti, working in a public sector bank here for the last three years, had been charged by Kerala police with cheating, forgery and impersonation.
Bitti landed in trouble after the employees of the bank’s branch at Pazhayangadi grew suspicious of the true identity of their colleague on seeing his photo among pictures of accused in various sex crimes shown by TV channels and posted on the internet in the wake of the Delhi gangrape incident.
Later, the bank authorities also received an anonymous letter stating that the man who was working there as “Raghav Raja” was Bitti.
According to sources, Bitti was suspected to have forged several documents in Andhra Pradesh to conceal his real identity during his stay there. (PTI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel