Judge found dead in Odisha

Cuttack: A special POCSO judge in Odisha’s Cuttack was found dead at his official residence here on Friday, police said.

The deceased 49-year-old judge was identified as Subash Kumar Behari.

The body of the POCSO court judge was found hanging from a ceiling fan and there were injury marks on his neck, said Tapas Pradhan, the Assistant Commissioner of Police of Zone-3 of Cuttack city.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital where doctors declared him brought dead.

The incident happened when his children had gone to school and his wife was not at home, the police said.

He had asked his orderly to go home as there was not much work to be done for the day, the police said.

While the police were yet to ascertain the cause of his death, the investigating officials said prima facie, it seems to be a case of death by suicide.

The body was sent for post-mortem examination to SCB Medical College Hospital in Cuttack.

The judge was on leave for the past two days and was scheduled to join work on Friday.

The deceased judge’s stenographer, Rabi Narayan Mahapatra, said that he called him in the morning and asked him to write a leave application for Friday.

The legal officer hailed from the Jajpur district and is survived by a wife and two daughters.