(Representational image)A 40-year-old woman from Jalandhar in Punjab has filed a petition in the district court against a cancellation report by Chandigarh Police in her rape case. She had alleged a 33-year-old Air Force officer had raped her in Chandigarh in 2016.
In the protest petition, filed in the court of Harleen Pal Singh, Judicial Magistrate First Class last month, against the cancellation report, the woman sought directions for the Chandigarh Police for further investigation. The matter is scheduled for hearing on February 8.
As per the woman’s complaint, she met the accused, Ajay Kumar, in 2013, while traveling in a train from Delhi to Ludhiana. They became friends and later met in 2014 at a dormitory in Sector 43, Chandigarh, where he allegedly proposed her marriage.
The woman alleged that the accused raped her on the pretext of marriage, but later in November 2014, he told her that he was getting married to another girl and that he would not be able to marry her as she was older to him, besides their religion and caste were different. Thus, he allegedly stopped responding to her phone calls.
The woman then in February 2016 learned that the accused had got married. She then contacted the Chandigarh Police and lodged a formal complaint.
The Chandigarh Police, though registered an FIR of rape, filed a cancellation report in the court in August 2016. The police in the cancellation report mentioned that the woman initially refused to get a medical test done, however, it was carried out later. The dormitory, where the alleged incident of rape took place, did not exist, mentioned the report. Thus the police did not find any evidence against the accused.
Advocate Gurpratap Singh Bhatti, counsel for the woman, argued in the petition that the police neither called the woman to join the investigation of the case, nor any other person from the spot to record statements pertaining to the complaint. “The accused had been threatening the woman with an obscene video, which he had made at the time of the incident, and the victim had apprised the Station House Officer of Sector 36 police station, where the FIR had been lodged, about it, but no action had been taken. The conduct of the police shows that they are hand in glove with the accused and helping him in every manner, thus the case shall be marked for an investigation to an independent agency,” he pleaded.
