A Bengaluru-based lawyer, who claimed on social media that she was abused and spat on by the wife of an IPS officer during a row, has written to the Home Minister and senior police officers, including the police commissioner, after the officer’s wife filed a complaint against her.
The Commercial Street police have registered an FIR against the lawyer under the Epidemic Diseases Act.
The two ladies are neighbours in a building on Infantry Road.
In a social media post, the lawyer, Vandana Venkatesh, alleged that Honey Hilori, wife of IPS officer Ajay Hilori, got the police to intimidate her when she confronted the latter about the noise her child was making on Monday. The officer’s family has been in quarantine after Mr. Hilori tested positive for COVID-19.
“Ms. Hilori took offence and in the evening around seven to eight police officials, some not in uniform, visited my home, yelled at me citing child abuse and recorded me without my consent. When I confronted Ms. Hilori about this, she spat on my face and verbally abused me,” Ms. Venkatesh alleged.
She told The Hindu that she got to know about the complaint against her on Tuesday evening when she went to the Commercial Street Police Station to lodge a complaint against Ms. Hilori. “A lady police personnel started recording me when I went to file the complaint, and the police were hostile. At first, they denied coming to my house,” Ms. Venkatesh alleged.
“Spitting on my face and then sending seven to eight police personnel to intimidate me is blatant abuse of power,” she told The Hindu.
In her email to senior officials, she requested the authorities concerned to consider it as a complaint. “It is not possible to file the above complaint to the officers who are openly hostile considering these officers were the ones who had come to our house. Now due to an FIR with false claims (which also states that I had previously visited their house to shout at the children – which is false as CCTV footage will confirm)….I am constrained to write an email complaint which we request you to consider as an FIR,” the email of Vandana Venkatesh stated.