The National Human Rights Commission has taken a serious view on the "mishandling" of a police complaint in connection with an alleged gangrape of a woman in Uttar Pradesh in 2013, and directed its own probe team to analyse the case and submit the report in four weeks.
The incident took place in Firozabad on November 5, 2013 and the Commission took cognisance of it on the basis of the complaint filed a month later and an accompanying newspaper report that the woman was gangraped by some men of her village Zeda in the district.
The NHRC today claimed the victim's father went to Eka Police Station a day after the incident, but the police "did not register an FIR" then. It was registered November 19, 2013 when IGP of Allahabad directed SP of Firozabad to register a case.
The victim was medically examined but still no further action was taken by the police against the accused as Firozabad and Mathura police fought over the jurisdiction of the place where the incident happened.
Thereafter the case was was not properly investigated. Instead, the UP Police authorities tried to "malign" the character of the victim.
They neither arrested the accused nor interrogated them and "closed the investigation" in the case on the ground that the victim was a "woman of questionable character", the NHRC claimed in a statement.
In view of the seriousness of the allegations about the totally "biased and partisan attitude" displayed by Firozabad and Mathura district police, the Commission has directed its DIG (Investigation) to depute a team to record detailed statements of the victim, her husband and her witnesses, about the allegations contained in the FIR.
The DIG (Investigation) shall also analyse the case filed at the Mahila Police Station (Firozabad) and submit a detailed report within four weeks, it said.
Recording its extreme distress at such a "mentality of UP Police Officers", which it held as discernible in this case, the Commission has stressed that every woman, irrespective of her character has a legal protection against violation of her body.
"Therefore, merely because she is a woman of easy virtue", her evidence cannot be thrown over board. At the most the officer called upon to evaluate her evidence would be required to administer caution unto himself before accepting her evidence," it said.
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