New Delhi: In a case of a station house officer (SHO) raping a 13-year-old girl in Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court cancelled the accused's bail.
For boys from the minor girl's village lured her to the neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and gang-raped her. Later, they left back to her village. When the survivor went to the Pali police station, located in Uttar Pradesh's Lalitpur district, the SHO Tilakdhari Saroj raped her after detaining her, IANS reported.
A Supreme Court bench, headed by Justice AS Bopanna, ruled that it had occasion to consider the issue of granting bail to a police official in a situation where he is alleged to have abused his office in the case of State of Jharkhand vs Sandeep Kumar and held against any lenience being shown, by treating such an accused policeman on par with a common man accused of such an offence.
The bench, also comprising Justice Sanjay Kumar, said, "Notably, that (Sandeep Kumar's judgment) was not even a case involving a heinous offence. In the present case, the situation is far worse as respondent No 1, being the Station House Officer of the Police Station where the minor victim girl was brought to secure justice, is alleged to have resorted to committing the same heinous crime of raping her."
The accused police officer was granted conditional bail in March by the Allahabad High Court, observing that the prosecution's allegations do not inspire confidence. A bench of Justice Siddharth had observed that the electronic data and call details showed that the victim was not in the police station on the alleged date of the incident.
However, the top court allowed the victim's mother's appeal and ruled that it did not find any reasons worth the name justifying the grant of bail to the accused police official at this stage. It ordered the accused to surrender.
The court ordered, "The appeal is accordingly allowed…. (Accused SHO) shall surrender forthwith, failing which the state shall take necessary steps to apprehend him and send him to judicial custody."