Jaipur, January 10
Fugitive top cop B.B. Mohanti surrendered before a local court today after eluding the police for five months for allegedly helping his rape-convicted son jump parole.

The suspended Orissa cadre IPS officer, sporting a beard, was taken to Central jail after additional chief judicial magistrate Rajendra Kumar Bansal remanded him in judicial custody for two weeks.

Mohanti immediately applied for bail but his plea was rejected by Bansal. The officer’s son Bitti was lodged in the same jail before he jumped parole and is still in hiding for over a year.

Mohanti, who was the DGP(Home Guards), came out in the open today eight days after he told the Supreme Court that he will surrender in Rajasthan in two weeks time.

He has been evading both the Orissa and Rajasthan police since August 24 and a Jaipur court had even declared the officer as an absconder on suspicion that he helped his son escape while on parole and is hiding him.

Bitti was given parole from November 20 to December 4, 2006, reportedly on his father’s application on the grounds of his mother’s illness. Bitti was found guilty of raping a German research scholar by a court one month after committing the offence in Alwar on March 20, 2006.

Non-bailable warrants issued by the city court also could not be served on him.

On November 15 last year, a local court had also issued standing warrants against Mohanti under which he could be arrested at any time and at any place.

The court had also declared Bitti who had jump parole as an absconder and issued similar warrants against him .

It had also sought details of the property owned by Mohanti senior who was reported to be missing since August 24.

An NBW was issued in June last year by chief judicial magistrate, Jaipur, after the IPS officer failed to explain the whereabouts of his son Bitti, whose release on parole from a Rajasthan prison was facilitated by him by giving a surety.

The Rajasthan government had alleged that the Orissa government was not cooperating with it in executing the NBW against the suspended IPS officer.

After NBWs was issued, Rajasthan police officers made frantic searches in the residence and office premises of the IPS officer but could not locate him.

The police from that state failed to arrest him several times and he went to hiding after the Orissa government was asked to execute the NBWs against Mohanti.

As the Orissa police failed to trace Mohanti, it handed over the official document relating to his suspension to his wife and pasted a copy of it on his official residence at Cuttack.

Mohanti was also warned that the government would be forced to take disciplinary action against him ex-parte for his evasive act. — PTI