CUTTACK: The court of Sessions Judge, Cuttack, has acquitted notorious gangster siblings Sushanta Kumar Dhalasamanta (52) and Sushil Kumar Dhalasamanta (48) along with six others in the 2013 double-murder case of their former associates Manoj Mallick and Omprakash Swain.
In the judgment on Thursday, the Sessions Judge Sitikantha Samal held that the prosecution failed to establish beyond reasonable doubt that the two alleged victims were murdered by the accused.
While special pubic prosecutor DP Das led the prosecution, senior advocate Saura Chandra Mohapatra represented the Dhalsamanta brothers. “To sum up, it is found that the prosecution has failed to establish the necessary links so as to complete the chain of circumstances that the accused persons facing this trial have abducted and committed the murder of Dipu @ Manoj Kumar Mallick and Omm @ Omprakash Swain and disposed of their dead bodies in Jharkhand,” the trial court observed.
The six other accused acquitted included Debasis Kar (47), Suvendu Das (35), Arif Khan (40), Debashis Sahoo (34), Bharat Behera (34) and Debadutta Das (35). Since the accused Bholanath Bhagat and Bhajana alias Sanjaya Kumar Sahoo died during the trial, the case against them was abated in 2021 and 2022 respectively.
But the trial court convicted the Dhalsamanta brothers in a case of unauthorised possession of deadly firearms and prohibited arms and sentenced the duo to seven years of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 10,000 each. Despite the acquittal in the murder case, the duo will continue to be in jail in connection with other criminal cases still pending against them.
Cuttack police had arrested them on January 29, 2016, for their alleged involvement in abduction and murder of Mallick and Swain. Charge sheets were filed naming the Dhalsamant brothers as the prime accused along with eight others as co-accused in May-June, 2016.
The case created a sensation as the police claimed in the charge sheet that Mallick and Swain were abducted from their houses in Cuttack and beaten to death at a farmhouse near Athagarh in November 2013. Later their bodies were taken to Paschimi Singhbhum area in Jharkhand, dumped there and set on fire by using petrol.