The CBI investigating the suspicious death of a lady tribal police officer of Jharkhand Police Rupa Tirkey has accessed a video that makes sensational disclosure how MLA and working president of Jharkhand Congress Bandhu Tirkey was pressurizing the family not to demand the CBI inquiry of the death.
In the video, the MLA is heard asking family members that they should not press for the CBI inquiry and they should trust the judicial inquiry set up by Hemant Soren led JMM-Congress-RJD government. The former chief justice of Jharkhand High Court Binod Kumar Gupta was appointed to conduct the judicial inquiry. Bandhu Tirkey asked them to settle with a petrol pump, compensation money and a government job for one of the members of the family.
The video, also in the possession of OpIndia, was filmed on the night of June 10 at the Ranchi residence of the victim where Bandhu Tirkey had gone to meet family members of Rupa Tirkey. Well placed CBI sources confirmed to OpIndia that during the investigation, the agency got one such video of the MLA.
The family has alleged that their daughter, an ASI rank official posted at Mahila police station in Sahebganj district, was murdered on the intervening night of May 2 and 3 when her body was found hanging at her official residence.
The family alleged that Pankaj Mishra, a close aide of Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren was involved in the murder.
Bandhu Tirkey also tried to convince the family to meet chief minister Hemant Soren once to raise their viewpoints. He further asked the family to settle with one petrol pump, cash as compensation and a job to any of the family members. Bandhu Tirkey informed that he has already spoken to the chief minister in this regard.
But Padmavati Orain, the mother of the 26-years old deceased police officer, refused all and said that they want the CBI inquiry.
Bandhu Tirkey said that the CBI inquiry means the agency will do an operation of this case and had he been in a position to take a decision he would not have ordered the CBI inquiry. On this, a male voice is heard reminding him that initially, he (Bandhu Tirkey) had also demanded the CBI inquiry.
Notably, the single bench of Jharkhand High Court headed by Justice Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi who had ordered for the CBI inquiry of this case while hearing the write petition 139/2021 filed by Devanand Oraon, a CISF employee and father of the deceased, observed how the family was pressurized to forget the case of their daughter.
“It has been disclosed that one person has approached the family members of Late Rupa Tirkey to provide them a Petrol Pump and forget the case of their daughter,” the court in its detailed order has listed it as one among the reasons if for ordering the CBI probe.
The social activist Tirthraj Akash, who from the first day has been fighting for the cause of Rupa Tirkey, said that Bandhu Tirkey is a classic case of a so-called crusader turned hostile.
“Bandhu Tirkey allowed himself to be compromised and now everybody knows for whom he working. He was first to raise the issue of Rupa Tirkey and he constantly visited her family to extend his support. He had even recommended the senior lawyer of Jharkhand High Court Rajiv Kumar as the lawyer who took this case to its logical conclusion. But gradually he started misleading and persuading the family,” said Tirthraj Akash.
The disclosure has left the Congress party equally embarrassed as a senior Congress leader said that the video is in a bad taste. “It was none of his business to act as an intermediary/ facilitator between the government and the family. How his conscience allowed him to ask the family to forget all in a sensitive case like this where the victim is a tribal police official,” the leader said.
Now Bandhu Tirkey is defending himself and stated that he just wanted to help the family.
But a senior Jharkhand High Court lawyer Rajeev Kumar said that video will help to establish the allegation that how the state government has been trying to scuttle the probe from the first day.
“The police deliberately carried a botch-up police investigation and hurriedly concluded as suicide. Police refused to register the FIR on the written statement of the mother of the victim. Later on, police converted it into a case of abetment of suicide against Rupa’s father and a friend of Rupa and police officer SK Kanaujia. But the charge sheet was submitted only against Kanaujia. Important evidence of this case were either ignored or destroyed. Amid investigation, the government started a parallel probe by ordering judicial inquiry. When the court was hearing writ petition to demand the CBI inquiry, the advocate general of Jharkhand scandalized the court. What Bandhu Tirkey is doing is just a part of desperate attempt of the government. Not only Pankaj Mishra but many powerful persons of Jharkhand will slowly land in trouble as the CBI has started probe,” said advocate Rajeev Kumar.
