BHUBANESWAR: Shocking custodial torture, disturbing sex crimes and gruesome murders dotted the news landscape in 2024 marking it - mostly the second half - as a horrible year for women of Odisha.
The state police found itself at the wrong end of justice system when a woman and her Army officer fiancé were allegedly subjected to custodial abuse. The couple walked into Bharatpur police station in Bhubaneswar on September 15 night to report a crime but instead ended being booked. The woman was even allegedly molested and assaulted by the police personnel. A nationwide outrage followed. Five police personnel including the inspector-in-charge were suspended. Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi ordered a judicial inquiry into the incident.
In Rourkela, an adolescent girl was allegedly gangraped twice by five miscreants at two separate places on September 22 night. She had been at a bar where she was served alcohol despite being underage. Once she stepped out, she was sexually assaulted twice within hours of each other. On the previous evening, two girls aged 14 and 15 years were gangraped in the city.
On the intervening night of December 7 and 8, a rape accused who had jumped bail murdered his victim in cold blood. The 30-year-old accused, Kunu Kisan then dismembered her body, set them on fire and dumped the parts in Brahmani river near Rourkela in one of the most vicious crimes of recent times. Kisan had allegedly raped and impregnated the woman over a year back. Charged and arrested, he tried to influence the victim to change her stand in the court which he thought was his only chance at avoiding conviction. Unsuccessful in his attempt, he kidnapped and killed the woman.
A day later, a 33-year-old pregnant woman was gunned down by her husband in their house in Sundargarh district’s Jhirdapali. Police arrested the victim, Shamyamayee Behera’s husband Deben Behera (35) and his relative Satya Narayan Behera, an assistant sub-inspector of police. Behera, a panchayat extension officer, allegedly had an affair with another woman which prompted him to murder his wife and make it appear like an armed burglary.
An illicit relationship had a bloody fallout when five members of a nomadic family were murdered by a rival group near Karamdihi village of Sadar police limits in Sundargarh on October 29. Three of the victims were women.
In Bhubaneswar, a 38-year-old former law professor, Anirudha Choudhury, killed his 68-year-old father, Sunil Choudhury in his asleep on July 3. Anirudha apparently wanted his father’s help with money to clear his loans. When Sunil reportedly denied, he stabbed his him death in front of his mother. In a separate incident, a 24-year-old man was accused of murdering his wife by forcibly administering her with a high dose of anaesthesia in the capital on October 28. Accused Pradyumna Kumar (24) and his two girlfriends, both nurses, assisted him in the crime. All were arrested.
A doctor of SCB medical college and hospital in Cuttack brought disgrace to state’s premier public health facility when he was accused of raping two patients. The 35-year-old cardiology resident doctor allegedly raped two patients while conducting their echocardiogram test on August 11. Cuttack had another shocker when a 19-year-old college student was allegedly gang-raped by her boyfriend and five others for several days during Dussehra.