Odisha cop found with throat slit; suicide suspected

Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, Nov 17:

Commissionerate police found the body of a sub inspector (SI) lying in a pool of blood with his throat slit open inside a room in the officers’ barrack of Reserve police opposite Kalinga Stadium in Odisha’s capital city here early this morning. A knife was also found from the spot.

The deceased was identified as Abani Kumar Barik, an SI of the 2009 batch working in the grievance cell of the headquarters of Commissionerate police here.

On being informed about the incident, a team of commissionerate the police, along with the scientific team, reached the barrack and conducted preliminary investigation into the circumstances leading to Barik’s death. Later the body of Barik was sent to Capital hospital for autopsy to ascertain the actual reason behind his death.

Preliminary investigation suggested that it was a case of susicide, Bhubaneswar DCP Satyabrata Bhoi said

“The deceased was mentally disturbed, possibly due to family problems or some other issue. His service record was not good and he was punished several times for dereliction of duty during his tenure at Cuttack,” the DCP told the media.

Ashok Barik, the brother of the deceased, also said that Abani was mentally disturbed and would often talk incoherently. “He would ferquently have hallucination that he was being hounded and would say; “Why are you not killing me?,” he said.