Court rejects police plea for further custody of Bitti

A court in Kannur on Thursday rejected the plea by police seeking another 10 days custody of the German woman rape case convict Bitti Mohanty, now remanded to prison.

Dismissing the plea by Taliparmaba Circle Inspector A V John for continued custody of Bitti for taking him to Odisha to subject him to DNA test for the final confirmation of his identity, the court said the accused could not be handed over to police custody for more than two weeks.

Police had produced Bitti before the court on Wednesday on expiry of police custody after taking him to Rajasthan for gathering evidence for the case of cheating, impersonation and forgery charged against him.

The investigation team, in three groups, have already collected details regarding Bitti, who was working as `Raghav Rajan' in a public sector bank in Kannur after jumping parole in 2006 while serving a seven-year sentence in Jaipur jail for raping a German woman.

The team that went to Rajasthan along with Bitti had collected evidence from the jail where he was undergoing his sentence.

A team which had been to Odisha last week had questioned Bitti's father and former Odisha DGP B B Mohanty, who identified his son through the photographs shown to him.

Another team which went to Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh had also collected evidence of forgery of marklists from the documents they got from the flat where Bitti was staying before he moved to Kerala.