Delhi Police is known for cooking evidence, harassment

http://news.oneindia.in/2012/12/26/delhi-police-is-known-for-cooking-evidence-harassment-1120645.html

New Delhi, Dec 26: Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar today wrote to the Home Ministry rebutting charges that police had interfered when a magistrate was recording the statement of Delhi gangrape victim. In his letter, Kumar refuted the allegation that police had forced a questionnaire on the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM), who recorded the statement of the rape victim. The Police Commissioner said it was police which had insisted that the statement of the girl be recorded as her condition was getting worse. Kumar also said investigation was the job of the police and it was doing its best to get justice to the victim. The commissioner’s explanation has a touch of arrogance as the Delhi Police is not known for its investigative trait but is more infamous for ‘fixing’ cases over the years. Take the case of a rape accused and the judgement delivered by the Delhi High Court in Mar 2010. The Delhi High Court had directed the Delhi Police to apologise, in writing, to an alleged rape accused and his family members for falsely implicating them. The court had also ordered the police to pay compensation for the ongoing harassment for the past 15 years. Justice S Muralidhar, while giving relief to Prempal – arrested on charges of rape but acquitted in 2004 – said, “The court expresses its disapproval of senior police officials for filing the affidavits using impermissible language to criticise the final and binding judgement of the trial court judge. The court cautions each of them not to repeat this in future.” “The commissioner of police is directed to take note of this and send, within a period of two weeks, a written apology to Prempal and each of his family members on behalf of the Delhi Police for the suffering they have had to undergo at the hands of the police,” the court said while asking police to pay a compensation of over Rs 5 lakh. “If confidence has to be restored among the citizenry that police is meant to protect their rights, then such expression of contrition by those at the helm is an imperative,” the court had said. According to Prempal, false charges were slapped against him for an offence for which it would have been next to impossible to obtain bail and even more difficult to avoid trial. “It was fortunate that Prempal was able to establish his innocence in this case and justice prevailed. However, by this time, Prempal was obviously a man broken in spirit and in health. The illegal actions of police have not only taken away precious years of Prempal’s life, which can never be retrieved, but have caused irreparable damage to his reputation,” the court said. The court had also expressed its displeasure at the language two senior police officials used in the affidavit, criticising the trial court judge for passing strictures. It pulled up police for not implementing the trial court order to give exemplary punishment to all those police officials involved in framing Prempal and to compensate Prempal for wrongful imprisonment and his harassment. Even in the Ramlila crackdown case in Feb 2012, the Supreme court had ordered prosecution of police personnel involved in the midnight crackdown on yoga guru Baba Ramdev and his supporters in June last year. The court had said “the present case is a glaring example of trust deficit between the people governing and the people to be governed. Greater confidence needs to be built between the authorities in power and the public at large.” It had directed the Delhi Police to register cases against police officials who indulged in destruction of public property and attacked the sleeping crowd. It has ordered disciplinary action against those police officials “who have exceeded the limit” and those who “didn’t help to rescue the injured.” In September this year, the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association has in its latest report titled “Framed, Damned, Acquitted: Dossiers of a Very Special Cell” chronicled 16 cases in which most of those arrested were accused of being operatives and agents of various terrorist organisations, only to be acquitted later of all charges by the courts. In some of these cases, the courts even held the police officers responsible for fabricating evidence to frame the accused. Neeraj Kumar took over as police commissioner in June this year but the record of Delhi Police is more of injustice than delivery of justice and confidence. Meanwhile, the war of words heated up between Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Delhi Police, with Delhi’s Chief Secretary PK Tripathi today (Dec 26) saying that the Delhi Police have no authority to comment on the functioning of the SDM since she did not report to it.

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