Guwahati, March 1: A rights group has moved Gauhati High Court, seeking maximum punishment for a policeman who allegedly inserted a stick into the vagina of a minor rape victim inside a police station here in 2008.
The Human Rights Law Network has filed a petition for framing charges against the accused under Section 377 of IPC that deals with “unnatural offences” and attracts a jail term of up to 10 years to ensure that the accused does not get away with a light punishment, the joint coordinator of the group’s Assam chapter, Sailen Dutta, said today.
The accused, Md Liyakat Ali, who was then the assistant sub-inspector of Bharalumukh police station, had allegedly used abusive and vulgar language, forcibly undressed the 13-year-old along with four other policemen and inserted a stick into her vagina inside the police station on March 13, 2008.
Ali had taken the girl, who was a rape victim, to the police station on the pretext of recording her statement in connection with the rape case.
In the petition filed by the rights group, the victim’s mother states that the policemen prevented her from entering the police station when she went there to bring her daughter back home. The plight of her daughter came to light when she contacted Childline, a registered society that works for children in distress, after being denied entry by the cops.
“It is a very sensitive case since the victim is a minor and a rape victim. Moreover, the person who outraged her modesty is a policeman, who is supposed to protect citizens,” Dutta said. “The police did not even conduct the victim’s medical examination,” he added.
He said they had filed the petition in the high court last week through their lawyers Anand Kumar Bhuyan and Manjit Das Boro after the court of the sub-divisional judicial magistrate, Kamrup, passed an order on December 20, 2011 by which charges were framed against the accused under Sections 323 and 354 of IPC, which provide imprisonment only up to two years.
The high court has asked the Assam government, Ali and the Union ministry of home affairs to reply to the petition before March 23, when it will come up for hearing.
