Nagpur: The Nagpur bench of Bombay high court on Tuesday slammed the city police for failure to properly investigate and ascertain the age of a supposedly minor girl from Rajasthan caught in the city’s red-light area. The court chided them by comparing their work to a postman, as they just brought the girl’s documents from Rajasthan, but failed to conduct further investigations into her background, or made efforts to check whether the documents are genuine.
A division bench comprising justices Bhushan Dharmadhikari and Arun Upadhye tersely asked IPS level officer to go through the girl’s papers and make appropriate statement by Thursday. “When this court is looking into a serious PIL, where a rule framed by the government, authorizing executive magistrates to pass orders for recording belated births has been set aside, and effort is to help juveniles, particularly girls, we find the assistance received today not effective,” the judges said.
The HC directed cops to keep the victim found in raids at Ganga-Jamuna at the Karuna shelter. The petitioner, Freedom Firm’s Mincy Mohan Baby through counsel Nihalsingh Rathod, cited cases of 18 such underage girls forced into prostitution several times, despite being rescued by police, due to failure of the government machinery, particularly the CWC. The girl is from village Bundi in Rajasthan and her family allegedly sold her into the flesh trade.
