[ Prafulla Kaman ]
PASIGHAT, Jul 27: The death of a 25-year-old girl, Mita Kuli, of Oiramghar village (Jonai) in Assam, who was found dead beside Bodak road near Pasighat in East Siang district on 19 May this year, is shrouded in mystery.
The victim’s family has reported foul play behind the incident, and appealed to the police to conduct further investigation into the case.
The deceased’s uncle, Pobitra Kaman Kuli, on Thursday submitted a supplementary complaint to the East Siang superintendent of police (SP) and the officer-in-charge of Pasighat police station, demanding further investigation into the case.
The SP, who heard the complainant’s grievances, later discussed the matter with the investigating officer (IO) of the case, and passed instruction that the case be looked further into.
Earlier, the police here registered a case under Sections 279/304 (A) IPC. The IO, Sub-inspector M Yanya, interrogated one Mandira Chetry (22) and two others on suspicion of their involvement in case and found dissimilarities in their statements.
“We have arrested all three alleged accused in this case and interrogated them, but none of them admitted any foul play behind the incident. We finally released them on bail due to lack of evidence of their involvement in the mysterious death case,” said Yanya.
It is alleged that Mandira Chetry, the prime accused, had taken Mita Kuli to Pasighat on the day of the incident. Mandira was reportedly accompanied by two of her boyfriends, Haliram Taid and Moriyom Regon, on their journey, and they reached the Bodak riverbank on two scooters. Kuli’s lifeless body was recovered from the roadside, in a pool of blood, in the afternoon.
According to the postmortem report, the cause of death of the deceased is “diffuse subdural haemorrhage over the base of skull, which is antenniform in nature.
The deceased body had fracture of the frontal bone and died due to haemorrhage.”
The deceased’s family alleged that Mandira, with the help of her two accomplices, killed their daughter and explained the incident away as a “road accident.”
“Mandira enticed Mita to stay along with on the previous night. As such, Mandira, who invited Mita to accompany her on their journey, later reversed all facts and tried to conceal the facts under mysterious circumstances,” the family alleged.
According to the complainant, Mandira enticed the deceased (Mita), pretending to give her an opportunity to meet her boyfriend, Anup Pandit, during the journey.
Also, after the incident, Mandira allegedly gave false information to the deceased’s family members, saying that she left Mita on the way to Pasighat and was unaware of her whereabouts. But Mandira later admitted before the police that she was with the deceased at the time of her death but had tried to conceal the facts out of fear.
“Mandira, who used the mobile of the deceased after her death, deleted all call records and messages from the mobile set in order to discard evidence,” the complainant said.
Thought the prime accused did not admit any foul play behind the incident, the local gaon burahs and elders, after hearing the inconsistent and dissimilar statements of the alleged accused, claimed that Mandira had “a well-defined conspiracy against Mita Kuli, which is responsible for the unnatural death.”