Accused seeks CBI probe into Puri gang-rape case
CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court on Thursday fixed December 19 date to hear the petition filed by one of the six accused in Puri minor girl gang-rape case seeking a CBI probe into it. The petitioner alleged that the investigation undertaken by the State Police is ‘one-sided and motivated’.
The Single Judge Bench of Justice Biswajit Mohanty also directed the State counsel to be ready on that day with instructions from the Government on the case. Rajesh Sethi (26), one of the six persons arrested in the case, filed the petition through his lawyer Byomakesh Tripathy. He expected the High Court to get the case probed by CBI or State CID-Crime Branch or a Special Investigation Team (SIT) or order a judicial inquiry.
“There is need for a very fair, effective and appropriate investigation into the matter to go to the root of the case and reveal the truth so that no innocent person is made a scapegoat and made to live in the society with a stigma and black spot in life,” Rajesh said in his petition.
The petition has sought direction for ‘a fair and proper probe’ in view of ‘complicacy and anomalies’ in the FIR and initiation of criminal proceedings on the basis of it’.
Rajesh has alleged in his petition that he was ‘not named in the FIR but was falsely implicated on the basis of the statement of the co-accused before the police’. He has sought quashing of the criminal proceedings initiated against him claiming ‘there is no single iota of evidence’ against him.
Police had initially arrested former police constable Jitendra Sethi as main accused and then three other associates, including Rajesh, for raping a minor girl in Puri on December 2. Later, police had arrested a couple as the alleged mastermind who had taken the girl to Puri.