Supreme Court sets aside Allahabad HC order granting bail to UP police officer accused of raping minor

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has set aside the Allahabad High Court’s order, which allowed bail plea of Station House Officer accused of raping a 13-year-old Dalit girl inside a police station in Lalitpur district of Uttar Pradesh in 2022.

The court directed authorities to send him to judicial custody after his surrender forthwith.

Acting on a plea by the mother of the girl, a bench of Justices A S Bopanna and Sanjay Kumar termed the situation as far worse when Tilakdhari Saroj as SHO of a Police Station (where the minor girl was brought for securing justice) is alleged to have committed the heinous crime of raping her.

“In this situation, his prayer for grant of bail required more than the cursory appraisal that was bestowed by the High Court. We do not find any reason worth the name justifying the grant of bail to him (SHO) at this stage,” the bench said.

Citing the Supreme Court's earlier decision on grant of bail in 'State of Jharkhand vs Sandeep Kumar' (2024), the bench said this court had then occasion to consider the issue of grant of bail to a police official in a situation where he is alleged to have abused his office.

The court had then held against any lenience being shown to such an accused policeman on par with a common man accused of such an offence. 

"Notably, that was not even a case involving a heinous offence. In the present case, the situation is far worse as respondent No.1, being the Station House Officer of the Police Station, where the minor victim girl was brought for securing her justice, is alleged to have resorted to committing the same heinous crime of raping her," the bench said.

Terming the rejection of bail plea of police official as vital for criminal justice system, senior advocate H S Phoolka and Counsel for NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan, who appeared for the petitioner, said "The Supreme Court has clearly conveyed a message that when the police officials are themselves involved in the crime, then no leniency would be shown.”

The agony of a Dalit minor girl who was brutally gang raped and for five months, the First Information Report was not registered.

After around five months of the first incident, she was gang raped again by the same offenders and when she approached the Police Station in Lalitpur district of UP to lodge the FIR, not only the Police Department failed to perform its cardinal duty to register an FIR, but also traumatised and re-victimised the victim as the SHO raped her within the premises of police station. 

After going through the HC's order of March 02, 2023, the bench said it reflects that the High Court noted the submissions made by the respective counsel for the parties and baldly stated that the prosecution’s allegations do not inspire confidence. 

"The High Court observed that the electronic data and call details showed that the victim (wrongly mentioned as the ‘deceased’) was not in the police station on April 27, 2022. Significantly, it is no one’s case that the victim had a mobile phone," the bench noted.