Police arrest 4 after tribal women publicly assaulted in Odisha on suspicion of religious conversion

The Odisha police on Dec 31 arrested four people in Balasore after a video of a group of people tying two tribal women to a pole and accusing them of religious conversions triggered a political row in the state.

The police have identified the arrested people as Pitambar Biswal, Prasanta Kumar Nayak, Jayanta Kumar Nayak, and Badal Kumar Panda. The arrest came days after a video purportedly showed two women being accused of forcibly converting tribals by a group of people surrounding them.

The incident occurred in Chhankhanpur village under Balasore’s Remuna police station on Dec 26.

Balasore DIG Satyajit Naik said the police immediately rescued the victims from the spot.

“Police visited the team with the help of a scientific (sic) team. The district police took proactive and appropriate actions to maintain the law and order in the area,” Naik told reporters.

Notably, police had registered two cases in connection with the incident — one against the two women and one against the group of people. Among those arrested on Dec 31 is Badal Kumar Panda, the complainant in the counter case filed against the women.

The two women were booked under Section 4 of the Odisha Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, Section 299 (deliberate and malicious insult of a religion), Section 3(5) (joint criminal liability), and Section 351 (2) (criminal intimidation) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) based on a complaint by Badal Kumar Panda of the Nilagiri area in Balasore district.

The police also booked 10-15 people under various sections of Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, and the BNS.

In his complaint to the police, Panda claimed that the women were “forcibly converting” a man to Christianity “by threatening him” in his home at Chhankhanpur village and that village residents had “restrained” the accused.

However, in his counter-complaint, the man who was allegedly being forcibly converted claimed the two women were known to him and that the crowd had “outraged their modesty by dragging them and tying them to a pillar”

“They abused them over their caste and assaulted them,” he alleged in his complaint.

On Dec 31, the police said they had recorded statements by the complainant and the witnesses and that the victims in the case had been medically examined. Balasore DIG Satyajit Naik was quoted as saying that the police also sent a requisition to the civil authorities to furnish the caste particulars of the complainant and victims.