Suspended BJP leader had planned to abandon domestic help in Varanasi: Jharkhand Police
The victim's statement was recorded before a magistrate earlier. A video of Sunita narrating her ordeal had gone viral on social media, following which clamour for Patra's arrest had grown louder across the state and elsewhere.
FollowJharkhand Police on Friday revealed that suspended BJP leader Seema Patra was planning to take her tribal help Sunita Khakha, who was allegedly kept captive and tortured for many years, to an ashram in Varanasi and dump her there, despite "not being able to walk or go to toilet on her own".
Vivek Anand Baskey, a government official and friend of Patra's son Aayushman claimed that the mother had tried to have her son committed to a mental hospital.
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"Aayushman told me there were plans to abandon Sunita in an ashram in Varanasi or throw her at an isolated place wrapped in a blanket," Baskey told reporters. Soon after Ayushman Patra sent gory pictures of the tortured domestic help, his mother had him taken by force by local policemen to the Central Institute of Psychiatry (CIP) in a hand-cuffed state, to be admitted for mental disorder.
When Baskey reached the hospital on being informed of the development, Ayushman accused Patra of forcing Sunita to drink her own urine, and requested his friend to save the maid before she suffered more damage.
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The Patra family's driver Ranjeet Kumar Singh later told Baskey that "whatever Ayushman Bhaiyya told is true."
Meanwhile, the CIP doctors who were not fully convinced that Ayushman did not need immediate treatment, asked for him to be brought to the hospital next week.Â
It is reportedly said that his mother rushed him to another mental institution and had him admitted to a paid ward. After this, Baskey decided it was time to go to the police to try and get the maid rescued as well as rescue his friend Ayushman, who he felt was in perfectly normal mental health.
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An earlier attempt to rescue Sunita, when the driver had lent his phone to her to contact a relative, had to be aborted as Seema Patra had come to know of the attempt and had flown into a rage, Bakey said.
"I fear for both Aayushman and his father Maheshwar Patra who was not allowed to even come to the balcony, as per driver Ranjeet's information.... I have in a petition requested the Investigating Officer of the case to make the daughter of Seema Patra co-accused, as she had taken Sunita to Delhi, where too, she underwent inhuman torture," he said.
Sunita was found in an "indescribable condition" after police raided the residence, Argora Police Station in-charge Vinod Kumar had said.
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"She had severe wounds and burn marks all over her body, as examined by a woman officer. She looked highly malnourished. She is in a state of trauma. Sunita claimed that she was made to lick her urine. Many of her teeth are missing. She was allegedly hit with iron rods," Kumar told reporters.
The victim's statement was recorded before a magistrate earlier. A video of Sunita narrating her ordeal had gone viral on social media, following which clamour for Patra's arrest had grown louder across the state and elsewhere.
(With inputs from PTI)
