Suspended BJP leader had planned to abandon tribal help in Varanasi ashram: Police complaint

Suspended BJP leader Seema Patra being arrested by police on allegations of torturing her 29-year-old tribal help Sunita, in Ranchi. Pic/PTI

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", according to the original complaint with the Jharkhand Police.

Vivek Anand Baskey, a government official and friend of Patra's son Aayushman, who filed the complaint on the basis of which the 29-year-old tribal girl was rescued by police, also claimed that the mother had tried to have her son committed to a mental hospital.

"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 PTI.

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, as per the FIR.

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.

The Patra family's driver Ranjeet Kumar Singh later told Baskey that "whatever Ayushman Bhaiyya told is true."

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Apparently, 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.

His mother, however, rushed him to another mental institution and had him admitted to a paid ward.

After this, Baskey decided it was time to go 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.

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.

A tale of inhuman torture has unfolded ever since Sunita was rescued by the police on the night of August 22.

Sunita was found in an "indescribable condition" after police raided the residence, Argora Police Station in-charge Vinod Kumar had said.

"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 PTI.

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.

She was subsequently suspended by the party.

Patra, following her arrest, had claimed that she was innocent and "being framed" in the case. She was sent to 14 days' judicial custody on Wednesday.