Police searched the area for the woman and the vehicle, and registered an FIR of abduction at Shahdara police station against “unknown persons”.
The Delhi Police has filed a case of kidnapping in the alleged abduction of a woman in her early twenties — who was intercepted by a Delhi Police PCR van and “dropped home” by them but has allegedly been missing since. The sequence of events — which ended in disciplinary action being taken against two officers posted with the Police Control Room Unit (PCR) of Delhi Police — began at 3 am on Wednesday.
The two, an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) and a constable, were patrolling in east Delhi’s Shahdara area in their PCR van, when they spotted the woman. “She was standing in an isolated stretch and a man was trying to talk to her. The policemen stopped and inquired if there was a problem. But the two said there wasn’t,” a senior police officer claimed.
A police source said the officers asked the woman to sit in the van so “they could drop her home”. In the meantime, another man on a motorcycle arrived and asked the policemen where they were taking her. “The police personnel got angry. One of them slapped him and asked him not to get involved. Leaving the two men there, the policemen drove away,” the source said.
They soon discovered that the man on the motorcycle was chasing them, before disappearing a little while later, police said. “They dropped the woman at Pritam Singh Colony, located a few kilometres away from where she had been standing. She said she lived there,” added the police.
The policemen thought the episode had ended. However, the biker had called the control room at the residence of Delhi Police chief Aumlya Patnaik, “alleging that he had been beaten up by two personnel in Shahdara,” the source said.
Police said a probe promptly began and a PCR van rushed to the spot to meet the caller — whose identity has been withheld “until it can be verified”.
“The man told police that two persons wearing police uniforms had shoved the woman into the Gypsy and when he asked why, they beat him up,” an officer said. Police searched the area for the woman and the vehicle, and registered an FIR of abduction at Shahdara police station against “unknown persons”.
It wasn’t until the next day that the police brass realised that the “unknown persons” against whom the abduction charges had been lodged were two members of the PCR unit.
“The whole incident was corroborated by the PCR unit. But the two hadn’t reported the incident to senior officers,” the officer said, adding that “they should have acted professionally and noted down the woman’s name and address.”
Police said ideally, the two officers — who have been suspended — should have dropped her home, “kept a record of her correct address” or alternately “taken her to the police station”. “The PCR inspector was duty bound to inform the incident to his senior or the local police. He has been asked to report to district lines.”
When contacted, Special Commissioner of Police (PCR) Dependra Pathak confirmed the incident and said an inquiry is being conducted by an ACP-level officer into the matter. The woman, sources said, is still allegedly missing.
