The Supreme Court has cancelled the bail of a Station House Officer (SHO) accused of raping a 13-year-old girl inside a police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Lalitpur district.
The minor girl was lured to neighbouring Madhya Pradesh by four boys of her village, where she was gang-raped and then left back to her village.
When the survivor went to the Pali police station to lodge a complaint against the boys, she was detained and raped by SHO Tilakdhari Saroj.
A bench, headed by Justice A.S. Bopanna, said that the apex court had occasion to consider the issue of granting bail to a police official in a situation where he is alleged to have abused his office in the case of State of Jharkhand vs Sandeep Kumar and held against any lenience being shown, by treating such an accused policeman on par with a common man accused of such an offence.
“Notably, that (Sandeep Kumar judgment) 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,” said the bench, also comprising Justice Sanjay Kumar.
In March last year, the Allahabad High Court had granted conditional bail to the accused police official saying that the prosecution’s allegations do not inspire confidence.
A bench of Justice Siddharth had observed that the electronic data and call details showed that the victim was not in the police station on the alleged date of the incident.
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Allowing the appeal filed by the victim’s mother, the apex court said that it did not find any reasons worth the name justifying the grant of bail to the accused police official at this stage and ordered him to surrender forthwith.
“The appeal is accordingly allowed…. (Accused SHO) shall surrender forthwith, failing which the state shall take necessary steps to apprehend him and send him to judicial custody,” it ordered.
