Treating her domestic help inhumanely and torturing her was a usual thing for Seema Patra, the now-suspended Jharkhand BJP leader who is also wife of a former IAS officer, till she was exposed by her own son.
When Ayushman came to know about how his mother had torturing 29-year-old tribal Sunita, whom she had held captive for eight years, he told his friend, a government official, about the matter and asked for his help.
Acting on a tip-off from the government employee, the Ranchi Police swung into action and rescued the domestic help from Patra’s residence last week and recorded her statement on Tuesday before a Magistrate.
Patra allegedly admitted her son to a hospital for exposing her. "He was unwell," she claimed when asked why her son was in hospital.
After being arrested, the BJP leader claimed that she was innocent and that she was being “framed”.
After a video of the domestic help, Sunita, narrating her ordeal, went viral on social media, an FIR was registered against Patra under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act, and various sections of the IPC at Argora police station.
The FIR stated that Ayushman also showed pictures of the domestic help with bruises. Patra allegedly got her son admitted to a psychiatric centre when he started complaining about the physical torture of the domestic help, reads the FIR. “With the help of the police, the son was taken to a psychiatric hospital where he shouted at his mother: ‘You made her [domestic help] drink her own urine. What kind of inhuman person you are’,” it says.
In the video, Sunita is seen on a hospital bed with wounds on her body and face. She was allegedly beaten with a hot pan and iron rods and was forced to lick urine on the floor over years of torture.
Sunita, whose teeth were also broken with an iron rod, was unable to stand on her own when she was found as she was locked in a room without food and water. She is currently undergoing treatment at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) Ranchi.
The arrest of the suspended BJP leader came a day after Governor Ramesh Bais asked DGP Neeraj Sinha as to why no action has been taken against her.
Meanwhile, BJP leader and former CM Babulal Marandi paid a visit to Sunita at the hospital and said, “We came here to meet the victim, she’s poor lady and used to work at her [accused Seema Patra] house. The way she was beaten by her was not right. It’s good that she [Seema Patra] has been arrested and the party has also removed her."
Patra, who was BJP’s national executive member in Jharkhand, was suspended by the party on Tuesday. She is the wife of a retired IAS officer.
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