Lawyers of Hathras gang-rape victim demand fresh probe against police officer

Alleging that the departmental inquiry being conducted against Circle Inspector Ram Shabd is illegal, the lawyers of the Hathras rape case on Saturday called upon the Director-General of Police for a fresh departmental inquiry into Shabd in line with the principles of natural justice, reports LiveLaw.

Senior Advocate Vrinda Grover asked to invoke penal laws for "deliberately sabotaging criminal investigations" under Section 166A, 192, 201, and 218 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 4 of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. She alleged that the ongoing inquiry is farcical and without any adherence to the principles of natural justice.

Shabd had previously led the investigation of the gang rape of a Dalit woman in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, by upper caste men in September 2020. He was later suspended for not registering the case as gang rape and not recording the names of the accused despite the victim's statement. The case was then transferred to the CBI.

The representation also alleged that Shab had deliberately lost critical, time-sensitive evidence and did not record the statement of the family of the victim. Though the victim's family was summoned by Praveen Kumar, IG of the Meerut Zone, to record their statement, he was not present. Instead, Shabd, unchecked and unsupervised, recorded the statement and manipulated and distorted the statement in favour of the accused facing trial before the Special SC/ST court in Hathras. The statement was not read to them or explained but instead, the three, including the illiterate mother, the father with poor eyesight and the brother who hasn't studied beyond school, were forced to put their thumb impressions on it, the representation explains.

The representation further accused the police of exploiting the poverty, illiteracy and marginalised caste status of the family to mislead them and record distorted statements. "For example, Addl SP (Hathras) Shri Prakash Kumar asked Satendra Kumar, "Did you make any complaint against me to the SIT?", to which Satendra Kumar answered in the negative and stated that he did not made any such complaint against Shri Prakash Kumar. Satendra Kumar gave this answer in the belief that Prakash Kumar was asking the question with regard to himself and not Ram Shabd," the statement added. Satendra Kumar, the victim's brother, later found the statements were not recorded correctly but were falsified.

Claiming the constitutionally guaranteed right against discrimination and fair state action, the representation seeks to seriously deal with sabotaging of investigations by police officers. It added that police complicity cannot defeat the right to a fair investigation or the observance of the principles of natural justice in quasi-judicial proceedings.