Court pulls up police for filing closure report in rape case

An FIR was registered in this regard at Barakhamba Road police station on June 7. "However, a cancellation report was prepared by the investigating officer — a woman Sub-Inspector — two months later and submitted on August 16. The cancellation was approved by the ACP on August 21," the officer said.

One of the reasons Delhi Police gave for the closure of the case was that the victim had changed the location of the occurrence of the incident in her statements, leading to doubts about the veracity of her version.

However, the victim said she had told police about the confusion she had over the place where she was raped. Her employer had multiple offices and the name of one particular address — at Kasturba Gandhi Marg — was the one she first mentioned. She later told police that the incident had taken place at his house .

She said police had decided to ignore her complaint over a "minor" mistake.

The court too noted that any contradiction about the place of incident was required to be examined only at the trial stage.

"Unfortunately, the IO took upon herself to undertake the job of court in disbelieving the statement," the order said.

Terming it "intriguing" that despite the complainant's statement before the magistrate, the IO had preferred to conclude there was no ground to proceed against the accused, the court said. The supervisory SHO and ACP too had turned a blind eye to the cancellation report, the court said.

The order further said that the manner in which the cancellation report has been submitted, the only inference that could be drawn is that either "the three police officers were too inefficient to analyse" when a cancellation report is to be filed or "the cancellation report was motivated".

... contd.

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