Kolkata: Girl harassed by moral police finds real police can be worse

Kolkata: The alacrity with which police had turned up at a young woman's door at 3.30am to "verify" the date and time she was harassed quickly faded when it came to catching those accused of abusing and assaulting her for smoking and wearing shorts. Two of the accused, identified by residents of the Pallisree neighbourhood of south Calcutta as being part of a Trinamul minister's poll campaign, have since spoken to Metro and one of them has even admitted to "accosting" the Presidency University undergraduate. But cops probing the incident said on Sunday afternoon - more than 40 hours after the woman lodged her complaint at Netaji Nagar police station - that they were "yet to identify the suspects". The family of the two main accused confirmed that there had been no phone call or visitor from Netaji Nagar police station to their home in the 40 hours since the incident was reported. Based on the FIR, the police have slapped charges on "unknown persons" under sections 509 (molestation), 506 (criminal intimidation), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 341 (wrongful restraint) of the IPC. The complainant had reached Netaji Nagar police station around 12.15am on Saturday, only to realise that lodging an FIR was as difficult as standing up to stone-age bullies. Her complaint required three drafts to meet the seemingly high standards of documentation followed by the police, who would find fault each time she wrote down her account. The young woman returned home frazzled and weary around 2.30am but didn't get any sleep because a police team arrived within an hour, ostensibly to verify her personal information. Around 4am, an officer called to say that the colour of the ink she had used to add the date to the complaint didn't match the rest of the document. She requested the officer to wait until morning for her to visit the police station and append the required clarification to the complaint. Her experience of police (in)efficiency had started at 10.55pm on Friday, when she was taken to the spot in Pallisree where she had been targeted by some men who didn't approve of her smoking and wearing shorts. The cops allegedly stood there for an hour trying to figure out whether the area was under the jurisdiction of Jadavpur or Netaji Nagar police station. According to the rule book, a complaint can be lodged at any police station, irrespective of where an incident has taken place. The complaint is supposed to be forwarded to the specific police station later. Around 12.15am on Saturday, the young woman was taken to Netaji Nagar police station, where she had to stay till 2.30am just to lodge her complaint. "Do you really want to lodge a complaint?" was allegedly the first question she was asked. Senior officers of Calcutta police said such a question should not have been asked. "When a woman turns up at a police station after midnight, her eagerness to lodge a complaint is beyond doubt. We always encourage victims to come forward to lodge complaints so that we can teach offenders a lesson. In this case, the girl showed courage in doing so," an officer not involved in the probe pointed out. He said asking such a question to a complainant suggested that the officers at Netaji Nagar police station weren't keen to take a complaint. "It appears the police did not want to add a fresh FIR to the list of the pending cases lodged with the police station. And this is why the officer asked the question to discourage her." When the Presidency student said there was no question of her going back without filing a complaint, she was asked to give a blow-by-blow account of what had happened. But each time she finished writing, the police would find a "mistake". Language not clear, sequence not matching, the exact act of the accused not described in as many words - the list grew longer with each draft. "Not once did they try and help me write down the complaint. They finally accepted my third draft," the young woman told Metro on Sunday. A senior officer described this as "a tool" often used by the police when they are reluctant to register a complaint. "In this case, it could be that asking the woman to write her complaint three times was meant to scare her about the consequences of lodging an FIR. If an officer follows the best practices of policing, he would guide a complainant rather than add to her trauma." The official reason for the 3.30am visit to the complainant's home - a police vehicle had dropped her home an hour earlier - was that she had forgotten to mention the time of the incident in her FIR. Several police officers said checking whether a complainant had mentioned the time of the incident in the report was part of basic training. But despite "closely" reading the Presidency student's complaint thrice, the officer on duty did not spot this oversight. "The police gave the impression they were building a watertight case, yet they did a shoddy job of checking the details," a source said. The 4am call to point out the difference in the colour of ink was unnecessary unless the complainant herself doubted if the details provided by her had been tampered with, legal experts said. "I have no idea how (the colour of ink in this case) makes a difference," said high court lawyer Phiroze Edulji. The police insisted that they did this to avoid ink in the face during the trial. "A defence lawyer could question the difference in colour of ink in a single document," said an officer. Lawyer Edulji contested the logic. "As long as the victim maintains that the writing is hers, no objection will sustain." -The Telegraph Calcutta