Thanks to an explosive affidavit by former Director General of Police A B Tripathy to the Orissa High Court this week. In which Tripathy says that Chief Minister J B Patnaik and former AG Indrajit Ray, among others, tried to suppress Anjana's case. Patnaik has denied the affidavit, calling the charges ``mean and slanderous'' but Anjana says they confirm what she suspected all along.

``I had information,'' she says, of the attempt to cover up her case. ``But I didn't have proof.'' And that's why she didn't go to the investigating agencies. She confirms Tripathy's charge that Patnaik and ForestsMinister Kishore Patel sent emissaries to buy her silence.

``They offered me anything under the sun - money, jobs, a house, even jobs for my parents,'' says Anjana. ``If they continue in their posts, it will be an insult to all women.'' Anjana says the ex-DGP's affidavit should be treated as an FIR and the CBI asked to start investigations afresh as both Patnaik and Patel were ``now the co-accused.''

Whether that will happen isn't clear but now that the state's top police officer handling the case has come out -``better late than never''- Anjana hopes that justice won't be delayed. For, her struggle has been a long one. At 17, she was married off by her father, a retired Chief Engineer, to Subash Chandra Mishra, Conservator of Forests, Sambalpur. Her husband was allegedly involved with his brother's wife and to get rid of Anjana, he tried to prove her insane. She was allegedly administered electric shocks at a private nursing home in Rourkela and later admitted to the Ranchi mental hospital at Kanke onJuly 15, 1996.

More than one year later, she was rescued by women activists affiliated to a human rights group who sent her to a shelter for destitute women in Cuttack. The then Deputy Inspector-General of Police (Central range) S N Swain registered a case against Anjana's husband and her sister-in-law who were later arrested.

After her release from the mental hospital, two ``reconciliation meetings'' were held by the state women's commission. Both failed as Anjana's husband refused to accept her. While the investigation of Anjana's torture case was in progress, the former Advocate General Indrajit Ray invited her to his Cuttack official residence for ``discussions'' on July 11, 1997.

Eight days later, alleging that Ray had attempted to rape her, Anjana filed an FIR in the Cantonment police station. Before filing the FIR, she approached Chief Minister J B Patnaik on the advice of the investigating officer of her case. With no word from Patnaik, and initial reluctance of the police to register a case,she urged the Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court to direct the CBI to handle all the cases, including the molestation case. Admitting her letter as a writ petition, the High Court directed the CBI to investigate.

The CBI which took over one year to investigate the molestation case, chargesheeted Ray in the court of the Additional Sessions Judge, Bhubaneswar who framed charges. Ray challenged this order in the High Court but his plea was rejected yesterday by the judge who said that there was a ``strong prima facie case'' against the accused.