Assaulted girl's family harassed

The National Human Rights Commission has asked the Bihar Police chief and the Delhi Police Commissioner to personally look into alleged sexual exploitation of a girl by employees of a residential school in Bihar, and harassment of her parents by Delhi Police.

They have been given six weeks to respond.The victim’s mother, in her complaint to the commission, alleged that at the instance of the rape accused, her husband was falsely implicated by Delhi Police and is lodged in Tihar Jail.

“The local police were also planning to send her to jail,” the commission said in a statement. “The family was also forced to migrate from Bihar to Delhi. The rape accused chased them to Delhi and continued to create trouble by giving threats,” the statement added.

The victim’s tormentors were involved in flesh trade and were in the habit of getting false FIRs registered against people to extort money. During the probe, the commission found that the allegations of the complainant regarding the connivance of police with the accused appeared to have merit.

Initially, even after registering an FIR on the complaint of the victim’s father, Bihar police did not take any action. Bihar Police in a report held that the allegations made in the complaint were found baseless.

The commission had then asked them to get the matter further investigated by the Crime Branch.According to a report of the Crime Branch, an FIR was registered against three persons on the complaint of the victim’s father. The victim’s mother claimed they were intimidated and threatened by the accused, and were forced to turn hostile before court and sign a compromise letter.

NHRC member Justice D Murugesan said the possibility of undue influence on the victim and her family to compromise the matter also cannot be ruled out.
“The petitioner has not only faced trauma in Bihar, but also in Delhi. The allegations, if found true, raise a serious issue of continuous violation of human rights of the rape victim and her parents,” the commission said.