Establishing the identity of rape convict Bitti Mohanty remains a tough task for the prosecution even as the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Payyanur, directed the police to produce him on September 23. Bitti has been kept as a remand prisoner in a Jaipur jail for nearly five months.
Whether the Pazhayangady police could produce Bitti in the court on September 23 is difficult to predict. It was while considering a petition filed by his counsel Nicolas Joseph that the court ordered to bring Bitti back. Bitti, who had been remanded in judicial custody at the District Jail here following his arrest by the Pazhayangady police, was taken to Jaipur on the basis of a production warrant issued by the court there.
The Jaipur jail authorities had maintained no records to scientifically prove the identity of Bitti. He has been continuing as a remand prisoner since then, as the police couldn’t establish his identity and send him back to the Jaipur jail to serve the rest of his prison term. It was while undergoing imprisonment at the Jaipur jail following his conviction in a rape case seven years ago that Bitti Mohanty, son of former DGP of Odisha, managed to escape making use of the parole granted to him. Meanwhile, Bitti’s counsel Nicholas Joseph filed another petition in the JFCM court stating that Bitti couldn’t be kept indefinitely as a remand prisoner. “He was arrested by the police here on charges of impersonation, forgery and cheating. No one could deny him his fundamental rights as citizen,” argued the counsel. Strangely, the police in Kerala too couldn’t complete the legal formalities relating to the DNA test planned to be conducted on him. The argument on behalf of the Jaipur police that adequate protection couldn’t be given to bring Bitti back to Kannur has been rejected by the court. The court had also issued instructions to provide the force necessary to bring him safely back.